The Discovery Channel televised a documentary on Thursday, January 10, 2002, that reflects the work of three University of Notre Dame researchers who have studied the Dead Sea Scrolls and the archeological remains found near the caves in Qumran, Jordan, where the scrolls were discovered.
Anthropologists Susan Sheridan and Mark Schurr, and theologian Eugene Ulrich, John A. O’Brien Professor of Hebrew Scriptures, were interviewed on campus for the documentary. Sheridan specializes in synthesizing osteological evidence of remains and has worked at the site in Qumran. Schurr performed fluoride analysis as a means of dating the remains. These remains, believed to represent some 20 individuals, were exhumed during an excavation of the Dead Sea Scrolls site in the 1950s.
Ulrich is co-editor of "The Dead Sea Scrolls Bible," which presents the biblical manuscripts of the scrolls in English for the first time. Ulrich and colleague James Vanderkam, also a John A. O’Brien Professor of Theology, are among the world’s leading scholars of the scrolls.