Abraham Rabinovich<\/b><\/p>\n
Keen-eyed Beduin watching bats flying in and out of a hillside with no apparent opening. A shrewd Syrian antiquities dealer taking tea in a garden and measuring over the top of his cup the eagerness behind the expression of mild interest worn by his Western hosts. Scholars in the cool silence of a scrollery, eyeing for the first time the fragments that will change the way much of mankind views its religious heritage.<\/p>\n
The story of the Dead Sea Scrolls is one of the most exciting modern times have to offer and much of it is still unfolding. Scholars have not yet fully absorbed or even completely deciphered the libraries uncovered in the dust of the Dead Sea caves; and there is a belief in some informed circles that some major scrolls may still be in the hands of Beduin or dealers.<\/p>\n
The scholarly focal point in Jerusalem now is not the Shrine of the Book, where the Israel Museum\u2019s scrolls are displayed, but the Rockefeller Museum, where an international team of scholars is painstakingly editing those scrolls that have still not been published.<\/p>\n
They have been at their labors for 27 years now and are preparing young scholars to succeed them in their task if necessary. Last year, the sixth volume of edited scrolls from the Rockefeller was published and there are twice as many yet to be completed.<\/p>\n
BSP<\/i> 8:3-4 (Summer-Autumn 1979) p. 106<\/p>\n
Such is the richness of the material, that an entire new field of scholarship is being opened. Even more significant is the impact the scrolls are expected to have \u2014 perhaps not in this generation \u2014 on Jewish-Christian relations.<\/p>\n
The First Scrolls<\/b><\/p>\n
The tale of the first scrolls has been told often. In 1947, a Beduin youth threw a stone into a cave on the cliff face at Qumran, about a kilometer from the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea, and heard the sound of breaking pottery. He returned with a friend to find some cylindrical jars containing a leathery substance of apparent antiquity. The leather was inscribed with what they took to be some kind of writing.<\/p>\n
Members of the Ta\u2019amara tribe, to which the youths belonged, took the rolls of leather to Bethlehem, which served them as a trading center, and showed them to two small merchants they had dealings with. One was an Arab antiquities dealer. The other was a Syrian Christian named Kando, who had a cobbler\u2019s shop and a general store. According to one version, the Beduin thought Kando might use the leather for shoe repairs.<\/p>\n
There were seven scrolls in all. Three of them were acquired for the Hebrew University by Professor Eliezer Sukenik, who, at great personal risk, travelled to Bethlehem aboard an Arab bus on the day the United Nations voted for the partition of Palestine and, in effect, the creation of a Jewish state. The other four were sold by Kando to the head of the Syrian monastery of St. Mark in the Old City of Jerusalem, who took them to the United States. After fruitless attempts to obtain the price he wanted in private negotiations, he offered them for sale in an innocuous advertisement in the Wall Street Journal<\/i>.<\/p>\n
By chance, Sukenik\u2019s son, archaeologist Yigael Yadin, was on a lecture tour in New York City, and a journalist called the ad to his attention. Through intermediaries, the scrolls were acquired for $250,000 \u2014 which scholars today consider one of the greatest antiquities bargains ever struck. (A single fragment from the Dead Sea Caves \u2014 not to mention complete scrolls such as those acquired by Yadin \u2014 can be insured for several hundred thousand dollars today.)<\/p>\n
More Scrolls Found<\/b><\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the search for additional scrolls was getting under way. In February 1949, the British archaeologist heading Jordan\u2019s Department of Antiquities, G. Lankester Harding, together with <\/p>\n
BSP<\/i> 8:3-4 (Summer-Autumn 1979) p. 107<\/p>\n
Father Roland de Vaux of the Ecole Biblique in Jordanian Jerusalem, led an expedition to the cave where the rolls had been discovered. They found only small fragments of inscribed leather.<\/p>\n
Two years later, however, other fragments began appearing on the antiquities market and de Vaux and Harding persuaded Beduin to take them to the source of the find. This proved to be not the Qumran area but Wadi Murabba\u2019at, about 20 km. to the south, whose caves had been used for shelter by some of Bar Kochba\u2019s rebels in the revolt of A.D. 132-135.<\/p>\n
While the archaeologists were occupied in Wadi Marabba\u2019at, the Beduin returned to the Qumran area to scour its caves. Finds were reported and the archaeologists sped north to undertake a systematic search. In all, 11 caves with scrolls were discovered \u2014 in most instances by the Beduin.<\/p>\n
Except for Cave 1, where the seven original scrolls were found, there were no complete manuscripts, only fragments. That, at least, is what was believed for a decade.<\/p>\n
The richest finds were in Cave 4, which was an artificial cave cut into the plateau not far from the ruins of Khirbet Qumran, where the Essene sect had its settlement. Fifteen thousand fragments were retrieved here, and they turned out to be parts of some 500 scrolls. The Beduin were the first to discover the cave in 1952 but it was de Vaux and Harding who dug the bulk of the fragments out of the dirt and the rubble.<\/p>\n
In 1956, a Beduin noted bats flying in and out of a pile of rock near Qumran that had no apparent opening. Upon investigation, he found a cave whose entrance had collapsed, almost completely sealing it off. He cleared a way in and found some nearly intact scrolls. Two of these, which were brought to de Vaux, entered the Dead Sea Scroll vernacular as the Psalm Scroll and the Job Targum. At least two scrolls, however, were apparently held back by the Beduin\u2019s middlemen. One of these, which came to be known as the Temple Scroll, is believed by some scholars to be the most important of all. Yadin was approached while on sabbatical in England in 1960 with a fragment of the Temple Scroll; but the middleman disappeared when the negotiations dragged on too long for his liking.<\/p>\n
Yadin watched the scholarly journals for years for any hint of the new scroll, but there was none. He learned, however, that it was being held by Kando in Bethlehem.<\/p>\n
The latter, meanwhile, approached archaeologists at the <\/p>\n
BSP<\/i> 8:3-4 (Summer-Autumn 1979) p. 108<\/p>\n
American Schools of Oriental Research in East Jerusalem, offering to sell \u201cscrolls\u201d \u2014 in the plural. He said he was representing \u201cprincipals\u201d who were demanding between $2 million and $3 million. Negotiations over earlier scroll fragments had been conducted by Kando over tea in the garden of the Rockefeller Museum, and fragments were brought to the museum library for the archaeologists\u2019 perusal after closing hours. Negotiations over the new scrolls were carried out in Beirut. Before a final deal could be clinched, the Six Day War intervened.<\/p>\n
Deputy Prime Minister Yadin has recalled how he awoke on the third night of the Six Day War with the realization that Israeli troops had that day taken Bethlehem. At that time a reserve general serving as special military advisor to Prime Minister Levi Eshkol, Yadin dispatched two officers to Bethlehem the next day.<\/p>\n
They returned with the Temple Scroll in a shoe-box. It had been stored beneath floorboards in Kando\u2019s shop and parts had disintegrated because of the dampness. Despite the fact that Kando was holding the scroll illegally \u2014 even under Jordanian law \u2014 Yadin arranged for payment to him of a reported $75,000 \u2014 the money donated by a British Jewish philanthropist \u2014 so as to encourage anyone else holding scrolls to come forward. So far no one has.<\/p>\n
Fifteen years after the initial scrolls were found, in 1962, the last \u2014 at least to date \u2014 were unearthed by Beduin. These differed from the others in their location \u2014 in Wadi Daliyeh, some 15 km. north of Jericho and 30 km. north of Qumran \u2014 and in their source.<\/p>\n
The Wadi Daliyeh scrolls \u2014 actually papyri \u2014 were from the royal chancellery of Samaria. A group of Samarian patricians had revolted against the newly-imposed rule of Alexander the Great and burned alive the prefect he had established in Samaria. Alexander dispatched a punitive force to the city and some of the rebels fled to the cave in Wadi Daliyeh, where they were massacred. Some 2, 300 years later the Beduin found their bones and the documents they had carried with them. These pertain to slave sales, marriage and property.<\/p>\n
The bulk of the Dead Sea Scrolls, scholars almost unanimously agree, were composed by the Essenes, an ultra-conservative Judean sect which had a settlement at Qumran from about 250 B.C. until A.D. 68, when they were overwhelmed by the Roman army of Titus, on its way to Jerusalem. It was the approach of the Romans that <\/p>\n
BSP<\/i> 8:3-4 (Summer-Autumn 1979) p. 109<\/p>\n
caused the sect to hide its vast library in the nearby caves. There is evidence that the Romans entered certain of the caves and ripped some of the scrolls to shreds.<\/p>\n
The Wadi Daliyeh scrolls from Samaria date from 385-335 B.C., almost a century before the earliest of the other scrolls. The latest are the Bar-Kochba scrolls. Altogether, then, they cover a time-span of some 500 years.<\/p>\n
Written on the tanned hides of goats or sheep, or on flattened papyrus stems imported from Egypt, they survived thanks to the humidity level of the lower Jordan rift \u2014 not a total dryness, which would have caused their disintegration. The carbon-black ink has the quality of India ink, according to experts, but stood up to the ages much better than modern inks would have done. The scribes used reed quills which were split like fountain pens, so that the ink could flow smoothly.<\/p>\n
International Team Set Up<\/b><\/p>\n
With the inundation of 15,000 scroll fragments from Cave 4, the board of the Palestine Museum, as the Rockefeller was then known, decided to set up an international team of scholars to supervise the assembly and editing of the scrolls. The team was composed of scholars appointed by the three major foreign archaeological institutions in Jerusalem \u2014 the American Schools of Oriental Research, the Ecole Biblique and the British Archaeological School. Its eight members included a German and a Pole.<\/p>\n
Work got under way in 1952 in a large room at the Rockefeller which came to be called the scrollery. Hundreds of scroll fragments were spread beneath glass plates on tables around which the scholars circled slowly, as if choosing snacks from an immense buffet. The fragments, some just a few centimeters across, were parts of 700 different scrolls from a dozen different sites. All had fallen victim to the depredations, wrought by weather, rubble and animals down the centuries. There were more parts missing than found.<\/p>\n
It was an immsense jigsaw puzzle, but it could not be solved by matching edges. Instead, the scholars, almost all of them epigraphists expert in Semitics, first weeded out the biblical texts. Some 200 of the 700 scrolls were from the Old Testament, and the whole corpus of biblical texts was represented except for the book of Esther. There were also apocryphal works not generally accepted by Jews but known to the scholars from their ancient Greek <\/p>\n
BSP<\/i> 8:3-4 (Summer-Autumn 1979) p. 110<\/p>\n
translations.<\/p>\n
In addition to separating fragments on the basis of content, the scholars were able to distinguish styles of script which distinctly changed about every 50 years. And they soon learned the hands of specific scribes, of whom there were altogether some 250.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe came to know their hand as well as we knew our mother\u2019s handwriting,\u201d says Professor Frank Cross of Harvard, one of the American scholars on the team.<\/p>\n
It took 10 years of painstaking work for the jigsaw puzzle to be completed. The fragments were pieced together with glue and rice-paper. Such were the ravages of time that even the best of the assembled documents was far more hole than scroll.<\/p>\n
Although there are probably more legible columns in the seven relatively complete scrolls at the Israel Museum than in all 700 patched-together scrolls at the Rockefeller, the great variety of works represented in the latter is of immense importance.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf there were a choice,\u201d says Cross, \u201cI would rather have a spread like ours than another seven complete ones like theirs.\u201d<\/p>\n
Before 1967, the \u201cIsraeli\u201d scrolls and the \u201cJordanian\u201d scrolls, although less than three kilometers apart, were separated by the barbed wire that divided Jerusalem. Some of the scholars on the international team managed to leak word on their progress to the Israeli archaeologists across the wire, whose interest in these ancient Hebrew and Aramaic writings was intense.<\/p>\n
In the Six Day War, Israeli paratroopers reached the Rockefeller Museum on the second day of fighting. Close behind them in a half track were Dr. Avraham Biran, director of the Israel Antiquities Department, and two colleagues. With the museum rocking from shell explosions and bullets whizzing through the gallery windows, the archaeologists made a quick survey to determine that the scroll fragments and other major items were still there. It had been reported that the Jordanians were preparing to ship the scrolls to Amman the day the war broke out.<\/p>\n
After the war, the Israeli authorities decided to leave the scrolls in the hands of the international team, originally headed by Father de Vaux and now by Father Benoit of the Ecole Biblique. The only changes introduced by the Israelis were in the physical conditions of the scrollery, where virtually no precautions had been taken against the further deterioration of the scrolls.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe introduced air conditioning, humidity control and, most importantly, <\/p>\n
BSP<\/i> 8:3-4 (Summer-Autumn 1979) p. 111<\/p>\n
light control,\u201d says Dr. Magen Broshi, curator of the Shrine of the Book.<\/p>\n
Although the Rockefeller scrolls are officially under the aegis of the Israeli Department of Antiquities, the editing is entirely in the hands of the international team. The Israel authorities have discreetly hinted from time to time that they would like to see the pace of work stepped up, but they have not intervened in the matter.<\/p>\n
The Rockefeller scrolls are being published in England in a series entitled Discoveries in the Judean Desert<\/i>. After a lapse of nine years, the sixth volume was produced in 1977. Cross believes that the pace could be one or even two a year now, if the publishers can handle the output. Father Benoit said there will probably be another 10 to 12 volumes.<\/p>\n
Some of these Rockefeller scrolls came close to being sold off to foreign institutions in the 1950s, but this was headed off at the last moment. Except for a copper scroll in Amman, and perhaps some small fragments, all the scrolls remain in the land in which they were written.<\/p>\n
Findings From The Scrolls<\/b><\/p>\n
What have the scrolls taught us? According to Professor Cross, who is one of the world\u2019s foremost experts on Semitic writing, and an ordained minister, the scrolls will change the way both Judaism and Christianity look at themselves.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey throw light on Judaism before the crystallization of rabbinic Judaism,\u201d says Cross. \u201cWe see intense party strife and extraordinary variation in halacha<\/i> and traditions. Most scholars had projected normative Judaism of the Mishna back to this period, but that was a mistake. We see in Judaism a richness and range of possibilities much broader than we thought.\u201d<\/p>\n
The biblical texts found in the caves pre-date by more than 1, 000 years the earliest existing Hebrew biblical manuscript, which dates from the 10th century A.D. They not only reveal different textual traditions, but permit corrections of errors in the Masoretic text in use today.<\/p>\n
Cross, for example, is editing a fragmented version of I Samuel which contains an account of a campaign against tribes on the east side of the Jordan, not contained in the Masoretic text.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis campaign is also given in Josephus,\u201d he says. \u201cMy conclusion is that the scribe\u2019s eye simply jumped (in transcribing the Masoretic text from an earlier version). This is the commonest of all <\/p>\n
BSP<\/i> 8:3-4 (Summer-Autumn 1979) p. 112<\/p>\n
scribal errors.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another conclusion from study of the scrolls, says Cross, is that the apocalyptic movement of the times was not a lunatic fringe but a major movement in Judaism that also affected primitive Christianity. The movement took shape in the Maccabean period, about 140 B.C., with the achievement of Jewish independence and the overthrow of the traditional priesthood. It was a time of great ferment, with the Essenes and Saducees on the right supporting the old priesthood, and the Hasmoneans, sometimes backed by the Pharisees, supporting the new. The effect of Hellenism can also be seen \u2014 not in the adoption of Hellenist ideas but in inducing systematic thought in Judaism.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou began to get conscious, critical thought,\u201d says Cross. \u201cThis is when Hillel developed his Bible exegesis.\u201d<\/p>\n
The message of the Dead Sea Scrolls for Christianity is far-reaching. \u201cAs we look at the Judaism of this period \u2014 much more complex than we imagined \u2014 Christianity looks much more Jewish,\u201d says Cross.<\/p>\n
If Christianity looks much more Jewish, what does this imply about the way Christians look at Jews?<\/p>\n
\u201cIt has made high-level ecumenical discourse easier,\u201d says Cross. \u201cIn the long run I have no doubt that this will affect how even the most traditional churches see themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chairs of Christian Origins have already begun to spring up in top American universities, with the focus on the Qumran scrolls and Hellenistic Judaism. More New Testament scholars are learning Hebrew, many of them coming to Israel to do so.<\/p>\n
Most of the Dead Sea Scrolls not yet published as well as those that have been are still largely undigested, even by scholars. The present generation is providing the raw material, with preliminary interpretations, which future generations will elaborate on and absorb.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll this is going on now at the scholarly level,\u201d says Cross. \u201cBut it will in the end reach preachers and laymen.\u201d<\/p>\n
(Reprinted from The Jerusalem Post International Edition<\/i>, April 8-14, 1979.)<\/p>\n
BSP<\/i> 8:3-4 (Summer-Autumn 1979) p. 113<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Abraham Rabinovich Keen-eyed Beduin watching bats flying in and out of a hillside with no apparent opening. A shrewd Syrian antiquities dealer taking tea in a garden and measuring over the top of his cup the eagerness behind the expression of mild interest worn by his Western hosts. Scholars in the cool silence of a … Continue reading “DEAD
\nSEA JIGSAW”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14932"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14932\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}