It’s nice to see Jim West endorsing Lawrence Schiffman, his exact words being “He’s awesome.”  I have used two of Schiffman’s audio courses before from the Modern Scholar Series, The Hebrew Bible and The Dead Sea Scrolls: The Truth Behind the Mystique.  However, I had heard about issues concerning Schiffman (a charge of plagiarism, or something like that if I recall correctly) but didn’t really know enough about the situation, and I figured I liked the courses regardless.  So, I didn’t think any more about it and have continued to recommend the courses to friends.

But, it’s nice to see that the issues I had heard about were a sham.  The two courses provide a good introduction both to the Hebrew Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls, though I don’t think the course on the Hebrew Bible is the best available (for that I might check out Amy-Jill Levine from the Teaching Company or Christine Hayes at Yale Open Course).

For those interested, I have a video of Schiffman on my site entitled “Judaism, Christianity and the Dead Sea Scrolls.”  Also, it is possible to get the two courses in the Modern Scholar series that I link to above free from Audible with a two week trial.  Just use the link the box in the sidebar of this page that says “Download 2 Free Audiobooks.”  Being a trial though, you have to remember to cancel if you don’t want to keep the subscription. There’s also a course by Eric Cline entitled the History of Ancient Israel: From the Patriarchs through the Romans.