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"The only seminaries that are still growing and healthy, with a few exceptions, are evangelical seminaries. And in terms of biblical studies, who are the guys emerging who take the Bible seriously? They're predominantly evangelicals. They do their homework, learn the languages, know their critical stuff well, go to Israel and do the digs. They're doing what the nonevangelicals used to do well 30 or 40 years ago. So we're taking over, partly through getting better on our part and partly because of the abdication and irresponsibility of the nonevangelicals."

By doing their homework with the Dead Sea Scrolls as their textbooks, Evans, Abegg, and Flint hope to do their part in shaping the modern history and interpretation of the scrolls and, indirectly, that of the Bible. "The scrolls don't prove that the Gospels always have it right," says Evans. "The scrolls don't prove certain theological things like inerrancy. What they do is tend to corroborate and support what I would regard as responsible exegesis that interprets Scripture in the Jewish context, and it tends to run against the sensationalizing of the Jesus Seminar and others who want to drag Jesus into a different environment and say he was only a Cynic philosopher."

Before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls 50 years ago, few believed any Palestinian manuscripts from the time of Jesus had survived. Today some archaeologists point to the possibility of even more scrolls being uncovered—literally—when the next big earthquake in the region loosens rocks and exposes hidden caves. For now, though, the scholars at the Seal Kap are more than content studying the scrolls they do have. By scrutinizing each jot and tittle, they are gaining new glimpses into first-century Palestine, a world ready and waiting for Messiah.

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October 6 1997, Vol. 41, No. 11