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You can find previous episodes of “The Stone Chapel Podcast” at Lanier Theological Library.
“The Stone Chapel Podcast” is part of the ChurchLeaders Podcast Network.
This episode has been edited for clarity and space.
Andrew Perrin
Hi. My name is Andrew Perrin, and I’m a professor of humanities at Athabasca University in Alberta, Canada.
David Capes
Dr. Andrew Perrin, Andy good to see you. Welcome to “The Stone Chapel Podcast.”
Andrew Perrin
It is fantastic to be on the podcast, and actually just a few feet away from the actual Stone Chapel. I’m glad to finally be here with you.
David Capes
You’re going to be in the Stone Chapel tomorrow, and you’re speaking all over the campus this weekend. You flew down yesterday from Calgary and we’re just so glad to see you.
Andrew Perrin
It’s fantastic to be here. Thanks for having me. I’m looking forward to everything you’re doing and to this chat.
David Capes
Yes, it’s going to be fun. You’ve got a new book out. We’re going to talk about it in just a minute. But for those who don’t know Andrew Perrin, who is he?
Andrew Perrin
Yes, that’s a question I wake up asking myself every single day. My name is Andy Perrin. I’m a scroll scholar by trade, and that’s been the better part of more than half my life. So, these mysterious Dead Sea Scrolls have captured and kept my interest. I teach at Athabasca University presently, but my past positions are at Trinity Western which might be more familiar to some folks. I was a student there, a faculty member there, I directed the Dead Sea Scrolls Institute.
That’s been a real major part of my journey, and not just academically, but personally. You know, these ancient texts, where do they come from? What do they mean? And what do we do with them today? More importantly than being a scroll scholar, I’m a husband, I’m a dad. I’ve got two young kids at home, and that’s where I try to keep my best self for.
David Capes
And you’re a coach. Is that true?
Andrew Perrin
I am a coach-ish. We’ve got young kids that are a little bit into sports, and the best way to support them and get into it is to find a spot on the bench alongside them. And you and I were just chatting earlier about all kinds of things like microphones and music and guitars. You’ve got a guitar in the corner over here, and that’s another part of my life, too. We can be critical thinkers, but I think we need a creative mind, so I play music a bit as well.
David Capes
Well, that’s an important part of my soul.
Andrew Perrin
Yes, you’ve got to have it.
David Capes
It’s a delight to have you here. Let’s do a little discussion about your book. First of all, you’ve got a new book about the Dead Sea Scrolls that come out. Tell us a little bit about that.
Andrew Perrin
Yes, I’d love to share about that. My new book is just out with Lexham Press. Folks might know them from an association with Logos Bible Software if you’re into that world. The book is called “Lost Words and Forgotten Worlds: Rediscovering the Dead Sea Scrolls.” I started writing this book without knowing it. But it came through teaching and working with students, mostly at Trinity Western and inviting them into this space of the scrolls.
Through the course of those classes, lectures and chatting with friends and family, I had a number of people ask, what are these things? But explain it to me like you’re not a scholar. Make it accessible. So this book is an invitation to the scrolls, where I’ve tried to dismantle any barriers to the scrolls. Even making sense of what their titles are is hard enough, let alone giving somebody a whole book about them.
David Capes
Because you have hundreds of books that are part of the Dead Sea Scrolls. It’s a library, really.
Andrew Perrin
Yes, we have something like 930 fragmentary texts. Imagine if you went down to a thrift store and bought all of their used puzzles, mixed them all together, threw out half the pieces, and said, what do we have here? That’s basically what the Dead Sea Scrolls are. Oh, and by the way, they’re in Aramaic Hebrew and Greek, and they’re from thousands of years ago. If you love puzzles, it’s great. If you hate puzzles, do not study the Dead Sea Scrolls.
David Capes
Well, one person called it the greatest archeological discovery of the twentieth century. I think it was Albright.
Andrew Perrin
I believe so, yes. And I think his comment is well quoted, for a good reason. Because the scrolls are these manuscripts that are from a few thousand years ago, before and after the year 1, leading up to the Common Era, just after their ancient Jewish texts. They have copies of our earliest manuscripts that relate to books of the Old Testament. They have interpretive materials. They have fragments that are related to some Septuagint books and a lot of writings we didn’t even know about. This was like an accidental time capsule. That’s what it was.
David Capes
Oh, I like that characterization.
Andrew Perrin
Yeah, good. And it gives us a very rare opportunity to ask what we have missed or misunderstood, even about biblical history and the shaping of Scripture, the context of Scripture. My book is really inviting people into those spaces. There are chapters on the development of the books of the Old Testament. How did scribes copy texts? How did they interpret texts? Archeology. We haven’t talked about that. Archeology is a big part of the scrolls, because there’s an ancient site of Qumran, where this scribal community lived, preserved and penned many of these scrolls. We can study how they worked. What they thought. What their life was like. There are all sorts of topics in the scrolls, as well as New
Testament contexts.
You know, there’s not New Testament texts there, because these are Jewish writings, but this is the common water that the early Jesus movement was swimming in, in ancient Judaism. So how can we try and get into that space and hear writers like Paul and Jesus differently in light of that. So the book is meant to invite people into that. It’s rooted in rigorous scholarly research. But I’m a fairly normal guy. I try to make things relatable and engaging, so I hope folks will find this is not just an important book for their intellectual pursuits, but also their interest in the scroll as someone who’s coming without a lot of
experience or exposure to them,
David Capes
Well, this book is coming out in the fall of 2025. Once I get my hands on it and get a chance to read it, I want to talk to you about it again and discuss different aspects. Because I’m sure you come up with some interesting conclusions and things I don’t know. I’ve taught courses on the scrolls. I’ve studied them myself. I’ve used them in my own research, and yet, there’s still just a world of things that I don’t know about.
Andrew Perrin
Me too!
David Capes
You’re here to teach for us tonight in our Lanier Certificate for Theology and Ministry. This is the kind of asset that people would get if they were to come and be a part of that program. We asked you to talk about resurrection in the Dead Sea Scrolls. We will tell people later, how to watch the full lecture from our weekend. What I’d like to do now is talk through the kinds of things you’re going to be discussing tonight in that lecture.
