Number 92 : May 1998 |
This is a casual piece so I will skip quite a lot and give no references at all. Those wanting the extra detail should have little difficulty in finding it in the literature.
Two indexes exist somewhere. One notes everything published on the famous scrolls and fragments, the other details every scroll and fragment. It would take a lifetime to work through everything listed. Several people have attempted a fair stab at doing that and reported, commented, and supposed, on what they found. Their books are readily available. I have tried to chart the main things they say. My comments on what finally appeared in that chart are printed in a different font (Lucida Calligraphy). They are not very much but might add something new. At any time some new appreciation could damage everything put forward by everyone in this area, it could also pull the rug out from under all this.
The view from outside. The scrolls and fragments have been fussed over for fifty years and they will be fussed over for another fifty years.
On the publications about the discoveries. One of the easiest things to do in this world is to pick up any single work on these finds and believe what one reads is the agreed start and finish. That would be a misplaced belief. The scrolls and fragments are contentious and so is almost everything written about them, delving into more than one recent work on the subject will rapidly prove that. The meaning of recent: Make sure the writer has looked back from after 1991, when the last of the texts and the greater part of the story emerge into the light.
On the scrolls and fragments. The first thing the story of the scrolls and fragments teaches us is that the least advantaged can be sensible and the most advantaged can be foolish. A tribe in the Dead Sea area made a living by working up and down the land with the rains and grazing sheep which they sold in villages and towns. For many years wealthy locals and foreigners had sought ancient artefacts from the region. Whenever it happened to be near a dealer the tribe sold whatever it had found in its wanderings. In time it became very capable in seeking out and recovering material, some say as capable as any archaeologist its members had watched and helped. One technique the tribe developed was to throw pebbles into caves high up in cliff sides and listen for what sound of disturbance came from within, it was a way to find pottery. Around the end of WWII some young tribesmen found an interesting cave. They salvaged about seven scrolls from it and eventually sold them into the hands of a local church leader. Many of his people had emigrated to the Americas. He took the scrolls there, sold them, and used the money to set up churches for his emigrant flock. The interested Jews who had bought the scrolls shipped them to their spiritual homeland. These scrolls contained much unique religious and historical detail from shortly before the Romans had broken up the old Israel. It was as though the last page of the old state were recovered on the very day the Jewish nation began the first page of its new state. The scrolls instantly became famous.
About the same time other similar works coming in from the desert attracted the interest of a Jesuit research centre in Jerusalem. With the aid of tribesmen its staff went out to see where the material was coming from. They were lead to a place called Qumran; about one full day's steady walk east from Jerusalem and set on a cliff top promontory one mile inland from the Dead Sea's north-western shore (at least one encyclopaedia incorrectly references the north-eastern shore). Investigations at the site disclosed about 450 assorted coins, a few run of the mill artefacts, the foundations of some kind of plain but substantial settlement, and, within about a one mile radius, many scrolls and fragments of scrolls which had apparently been hidden long ago in a dozen or so caves. There were signs of the place having been occupied about three thousand years ago, but there was nothing to indicate that the main site and finds do not date from around two thousand years ago. Of that latter time the coin and other finds suggest at least some almost continuous occupancy from 135BC to 135AD. In detail: It looks as though the settlement was fairly active through the period 100BC to 75BC and less busy from then until it was destroyed around 31BC, perhaps by earthquake and fire, or, more likely, by Herod. From then until about 5BC it might have been near abandoned. Between about 6AD and 68AD it was quite active again, and then it once more fell into near abandon. All the above discoveries were made during the late 1940s and early 1950s as people worked on the site from time to time. To put all that into perspective I think it would be fair to say that were it not for the manuscripts the site would be of little interest, except perhaps to specialists for the evidence of its earlier occupancy.
About 1950 a study centre was set up in Jerusalem for a semi-international team to begin sorting and translating the scrolls and fragments found at Qumran. The finds were set between glass plates laid out on long tables, in a room with large windows that were frequently opened in hot weather (frown). The people chosen for the team worked up and down the tables gradually matching whatever fragments they could, by ungloved hand (frown). They translated from the originals as they went and when unable to attend continued to work from normal or infra red photographs (smile). Texts that had been sealed in jars in the caves were mostly not too hard to deal with, but with much else it was not the same: Pieces were missing, and the fragments they did have were shrunk, wrinkled, discoloured, faded and stained, all differently according to precisely where they had lain in the caves or animals had scattered them to. Some items were thickly coated in crystallised deposits from sheep urine, and many were on the edge of turning to dust. These all added to the general difficulties one might expect anyway; that some writing was barely readable because it was faint or its writer had a very rough or over polished style, and that as the work continued over the years some materials slowly became nearly as dark as the ink on them.
Additionally to all that, even with the coins the archaeology was not able to provide exact dating. Which will likely remain the situation because the site was almost completely turned over by those involved. Also, unfortunately, possibly from accumulated exposure to monastic style buildings and activities, and from the lack of clearly overwhelming contra evidence, the Jesuit team leader came to an immediate opinion the site and manuscripts dated from a hundred years or so before Christ, and amounted to just an interesting find of a monastery for a group such as the Essenes: Widely held to have been an offshoot Jewish religious body working rather quietly on some ideas similar to later Christian ones but of little direct relevance to them. These assessments of the site and of the Essenes seem now both considered far too simplistic. Some writers ridicule the team leader for his evaluation of the site, but others treat him more properly on it. From what is said of it, the nature of the site is such that if it had disclosed that the Essenes had live there then absolutely no one would have been the slightest surprised.
Many other matters are said to have also obstructed the work: As team members arrived, mostly believing Christians, they accepted the team leader's opinion on the site without question. The team was too specialised, the best translators but working without the best historical interpreters. No Jews were ever invited to assist though the material was obviously within their special interest. A new and unreliable scheme of dating from handwriting style was relied upon. Translation work was parcelled out in great lumps with no deadlines. Funding and salaries of any sort were minimal. Careers could be made or broken. And the team included no archaeologists and preservation specialists. However, it was all begun in the aftermath of the world war, questioning senior churchmen was not then done, cross border co-operation in the area was negligible, every penny was needed in other places, and the staffs of distant organisations were still deep in the post war effort of getting their own establishments going. The failure was global. Those who should have immediately directed did not.
The scrolls in Israel were rapidly translated and published. They or copies of them are on view there. The international team members worked on with their collection, sometimes in Jerusalem, sometimes in their respective homes or faculties, many had other projects or teaching posts to attend to. They gave out pieces to favoured assistants and students but never allowed anyone else admission in case whosoever it was dashed out a pre-emptive translation. At the rate of one volume every ten years or so it soon became clear it would be a hundred years or more before they finished. Attempts by outside scholars to get things speeded up were blocked by the team leaders, sometimes in unscholarly fashion.
In 1967 the Israeli - Arab war came and went. Israel took over Jerusalem. The Israeli archaeological authority, hesitant to create an incident, left the team to its task. About ten years ago protest at the delays broke into a professional storm, scholars were entering old age never seeing things they knew were relevant to their work. In response the Israeli archaeological authority stirred and agreed the re-arrangement of work packages and a rapid publication schedule with the international team leader. For uncertain reasons nothing came out of that.
Negatives of the scrolls and fragments had been copied under strict access restrictions to several places in case the originals were lost. In 1991 in America, a holder of a set of negatives, in exasperation and possibly encouraged by the freedom of information legislation there, opened their doors to whoever wanted to see them, and someone else published a set of draft translations. The walls had tumbled down, but not quite all of them.
The negative holder managed to beat off angry complaints from the international team, but the publisher of the draft translations ended up in court and lost. Manuscripts had pieces missing and text was often uncertain in translation equivalence, so translators filled in whatever they thought likely in brackets. Copyright on a translator's infills had been overlooked. Very little on the scrolls and fragments has ended up in any court, but the case illustrates the worldly tangles people involved with them have had to be careful with. In court it was pointed out that if it were declared illegal to put out a comment upon a translator's infill unless the translator consented then scholarship could be obstructed. But the law is the law.
What then seems reliably said to be said in the scrolls and fragments. In essence, that the Romans arrived and eventually backed the darling Herod (Born c73BC, Reigned 37BC to Death 4BC) and his precocious temple priests. About 36BC some more honourable priests and their families having just withdrawn from Jerusalem to, or having many years before retired from there to, Qumran, issued a protest note and began to develop a way of life based on the approach that obedience to the law and some further effort would, with God's aid, bring down the deficient and enable the faithful to throw out the Romans. An overview of all the material indicates this group at Qumran was initially peaceful but during a hundred years or so became vitriolic. There are some points here. It appears now felt that rather than the group being some masculine monastic order, it was a fairly large settlement of devout families, probably taking in new families as they might arrive and throwing out some who lost the path. Also, rather than the group starting with a library which it never changed, it is now held that it began with only one or two papers and gradually wrote more through the whole period as it developed its position. It might also have acquired some texts from somewhere outside. There seem enough references to detail in the scrolls and fragments to support this picture. One must treat everything carefully here though, because, while in the manuscripts there is a great deal reflecting the final opinions of the people at Qumran, there is very little about any internal studies and debates they might have worked through in forming those opinions, to show if their evolution was smooth or involved internal squabbles, major policy revisions or dramatic changes of leadership. Almost nothing is know of what else they might have looked at. Insofar as the group's later vitriolism is concerned, then one proposal has it that a war scroll, one of the last works written, says angels will assist in the fight to throw out the Romans, but another proposal says that particular scroll actually addresses a final battle between good and evil at the end of time. It might be best to regard both of those suggestions as the same, at that time the new order was generally expected to begin at any moment.
Independently it is known that a widespread rebellion failed in about 6BC, and a major effort through 66AD to 68AD led to the Romans putting the boot in, to the extent of almost wiping out Jerusalem in 70AD (this would have happened earlier but Caesar became involved in something else for a while) and killing, enslaving and dispersing much of the population so as to nearly break up Israel completely. A further revolt about 65 years later saw that finally happen.
Some say the scrolls and fragments imply the Qumran group was not trivial or alone. I think a modern self evident analogy for the argument might be wartime Europe. At first scattered slight resistance, gradually it becomes organised, cells form, suddenly partisan armies. That had effect with outside help. The Qumran version is simply that it is almost inconceivable a small religious group could possibly appear so extensive and passionate in their documentation of Jewish national affairs unless they were actually a large and significant player in a wider game. The manuscripts show that on the first day they knew too much and that on the last day they expected too much. Initially they seem to have set down in public their precise requirements for changes in the behaviour of the monarchy and the temple priests, indicating that in effect they called on the government of Israel to reform. When that failed to bring change they appear to have gone towards strict obedience to religious law to have God bring down the monarchy and the evil priests and the Romans, with the implication that all Jews would follow their line to achieve that end. And, when that failed to bring change, then perhaps they began the secret war scroll project, the generation of a 13 foot long master plan for the mobilisation of the nation and its deployment in a fifty year heavenly assisted blitzkrieg across the whole of the Roman empire to bring down almost everybody in sight, and which even sets down the required performance of strike angels and prescribes the propitious inscriptions to appear on assault horns. Comments on this scroll suggest it could have been a hocus-pocus lift from a then already long obsolete but still freely available first edition Roman Army Battle Instruction Tract, with angels substituted for eagles, etc. One might also say on the war scroll that its originator clearly had no grasp of any economic realities at all and was not more than a gnat's whisker away from being certified .
We have now moved firmly into the area of interpretation. There seem three other favoured lines apart from the one immediately above: First, that the Qumran people were a body of isolated dreamers who in AD68 just happened to have a strange choice in suggestive reading material, and also happened to accidentally get in the way of the Romans during war games week. Second, they might have been a bit involved in temple politics, they might have been a little involved with Jesus and the Christians, Jesus and the Christians might even have developed one or two of their ideas. But, essentially, these people were non-activists bumbling along at Qumran until 68AD, when the Romans done them in along with everyone else in the area. And third, while no one says the scrolls and fragments mention Jesus and the Christians by name, several people imply or say he is mentioned in them at length as a one of Qumran's greatest and wisest leaders under various special titles, such as Teacher of Righteousness, and that the group was the core of the early church, and everything mixes nicely in with the New Testament and the church being wiped out in Israel by the Romans in 68AD. For the main part the presentations in this last version are loose, except for one very exact statement. Without that statement one could probably just reverse it and say the New Testament does not seem to be entirely nicely unmixed from Qumran and some of what is in the manuscripts, and leave it at that. Even the mildest relationships between accommodating religious movements across Israel would then explain how it was people such as Jesus managed the practicalities of travelling around and collecting followers at the drop of a proverb.
But there is the one troublesome note. In the Acts in the New Testament, with the writ of the temple priests, Paul goes to smash the Christians at Damascus, experiences Jesus directly, converts, and becomes virtually the constructor of the Christian Church. There is a pace to the story, there is nothing much saying he stopped here or there on the way, nothing explains how come the temple priest's writ was so powerful so far away. It is said the manuscripts and fragments identify Qumran as "Damascus", and Qumran was only a stroll down the road.
Whether the last is true or not, one can finish here on the primary subject of the scrolls and fragments and what is said about them. The above covers most things and should serve as a note of the main issues for a while.
Where does the story lead to as far as modern times are concerned. Well, in one direction probably not very far, perhaps clarification of a few presently ambiguous Biblical passages, and a little on the condition of Israel around two thousand years ago. One day what comes from that might be a slightly better picture of history, some minor refinements in religious instruction, and a little fine tuning of a few verses in various Bibles. In another direction it might go further, the finds reportedly include well written poems and other material, there might be several little somethings which eventually pass the test to be entered into the artistic record.
But, in yet another direction, it could rumble on to fork either of two ways, which both point to things very strange indeed. And in both cases it is necessary to look again at Acts. This is in the broader scope of this piece by the way, many writers on the scrolls and fragments do get embroiled in this area because they cannot avoid it or cannot resist it, and to be forewarned is to be forearmed.
Case White: If Qumran was not Damascus. Then there is nothing that shows any certain link between the people at Qumran and those in the early Christian Church. Does this mean nothing changes ?
Qumran draws attention to the period. In Acts 15, Paul comes back from missionary work abroad to face the council of Apostles and Elders on the issue of why he has told gentile converts they need not follow all the law. He sets out his case and, after a poll of the council and the multitude outside, James, believed to be the brother of Jesus, says what Paul had told the gentiles is all right, what matters is only that they do not worship idols, fornicate, eat the flesh of strangled animals, or consume blood, these parts of the law must be obeyed. On what is probably the compromise Paul takes his legalised personal version of Christianity away from Israel and carries on constructing his church.
The above meeting was about twenty five years before the 66AD rebellion, and it is said the attempt to Christianise the Jews in Israel only failed because the council and most of its supporters were destroyed by the Romans during that rebellion. Well, what would Christianising the Jews have actually meant, just how close to Christianising them did the council come, and did the Romans destroy Jewish Christianity. The Biblical Jesus drew huge supporting crowds and said they should not abandon Judaism, simply apply it in a more positive way, the people agreed, did they go away and instantly forget everything. Later, after the council's meeting with Paul, those involved went out to address the multitude. Did those in this crowd also go away and instantly forget everything. Clearly the message was well spread, and presumably in various forms it later went out into the world with many dispossessed Jews as a diffuse Christianism in the total culture. It would be virtually impossible to determine that element now of course, Judaism and Christianity having bounced around internally and against each other so much through the centuries any evidence will have long been swamped. It would never have been easy evidence to find anyway because it was not concrete, it would have been there only as slight shifts in some attitudes to some parts of life. And anything found might well have come from other sources because much of what Jesus said was not entirely new. Further to this, from various reports in Acts, Paul apparently wanted only part of the message, something based upon half what Jesus had taught, a new way, Paulianity, much of the new without much of the old. Now, there is enough in the scrolls and fragments to say the people at Qumran would probably have been able to recognise and come to some kind of accommodation with Jesus' kind of Judaism, but to them Paul's version would surely have been pure heresy. It is difficult to see how they or any other Jewish religious group could have got along with the early church after that meeting. We have here all the ingredients for a major explosion. The outcome of the decision taken should have been a blazing row through the entire country, within and between both the new Christian and the traditional Jewish circles. It is also the point where in effect the church washes its hands in public and says these are the articles of faith, pick whichever ones you fancy and dump the rest. Something that would normally crack wide open any organisation which tried it. So, why did it barely float down through history. Had the early church in Israel perhaps already become so trivial no one was bothered, if so it was not the Romans who broke it. Had it become so secretive no one else knew, what of the multitudes. Had it become so important it was already a granted authority which could do what it liked, James was reportedly able to use the temple's inner sanctum as much a he wanted at that time. To a great extent it all hangs upon precisely how large and loyal were the multitudes. And those two factors are perhaps best judged by noting the sheer weight of anti-Christian propaganda a couple of substantial Jewish sects developed and deployed around that time. Their leaders must have spent hours arguing over the Christians and their message to do that. Is it credible they and the Romans took the entire Christian message out of Judaism.
Case Black: If Qumran was Damascus. Then here we are given a mountain of religious and political activism. The wandering rabbi, Jesus, becomes one of many resistance workers criss-crossing the country, linking the cells. The secret agent is caught and dies trusting in the revolution to come. And abroad. Paul amongst strangers abandons what is not meaningful to him and them and develops what is new. His target is the heart of the empire. Control assists as best it can. The revolution begins and fails. Control and Paul are turned off. Paul's near-private gentile network outside Israel is about all of the system that survives, badly damaged but not dead. It recovers and actually ends up with gentile leaders, and the empire. And by then those leaders have no time to even look at some wild idea they might have inherited a resistance movement that once had a secret plan, which astonishingly had sort of worked. They have a whole raft of collapsing empire issues to deal with. But again the seeds had been scattered through Israel, trust in the eternal, trust in the law, trust in yourselves, trust in the future, some of all of that must have taken hold amongst Israel's multitudes and gone out into the world with them. But, except for the last, this thrilling plot all falls down on the point that public speakers have an interest in saying something new, whereas secret agents have an interest in saying whatever blends seamlessly into what is already being said. If the original church was at Qumran then the great war scroll was something that came in from outside, else, by 66AD the church in Israel had abandoned the last of its articles of faith and had gone even further from the message than Paul.
And all shades in between. With these schemes we have the second thing the story of the scrolls and fragments teaches us. That with so much it is inevitable at least something must mesh with any given set of values and become part of their owner's dogma.
But nothing is firm. Everything is as insecure as if it had come entirely from a dream. No one has yet established that the Qumran group caused anything outside it except a modern fuss. No one has shown that the Christian Church caused anything inside Qumran except some recent confusion. No one has yet proven any significant error in the declared generation of Christianity. No one has demonstrated that Judaism has not grown true from its roots. The defences are to deliberately memorise two or three versions, follow the money, and look elsewhere in the empire so as to broaden the view. Also of course to remember that dogma rests on what is overlooked, forgotten or unknown, be it truth, falsehood, or coincidence.
With the versions it is important to look down on them and not up at them. Play the war game of empire as a Caesar, fractured by a thousand demands, Israel can have one day, there is no time to give it more. In the morning, what are these people up to, the reports of the governors and spies. In the afternoon, will they ever be a useful element in the empire, the assessments from the heads of departments. In the evening, to the military, show them the meaning of power. Next demand.
The money, follow it from Caesar all the way down into the villages and back up again into the towns and into the groups, follow it through places all over the empire and into their hands. Where does it go, what is it used for, who knows. Eventually the bulk must return to Caesar in fines, taxes, fees and bribes. From whom did it come, from where did they get it, who knows ?
And what of those places elsewhere in the empire. It is so easy to become involved with these groups, we rapidly come to hate Romans, Herods and High Priests, we wish the rebels well, no matter who they were nor what they sought. But that is all about face. Step down and wander about in Europe two thousand years ago. The Romans arrive, a golden age begins; sensible work, efficient tools, comfortable clothes, make up, hair styles, fine foods, fine wines, great art, clean water, hot baths, toilets, under-floor heating, and, to cap it all, debaucheries down at the old grotto practically every night. Fantastic, life has never been so good. James's prohibitions, the Europeans have never heard such ravings, and they are on everything that has made the Europeans happiest since the dawn of time. A message from Rome. We regret, your son has been killed in action on the eastern front fighting the rebels. Long live the empire. And the Europeans say there is plenty of space in which to live and breath under the empire, what is the matter with those people, is every last one of them mad, they will never create anything better. There was much that was wrong under the empire. But many a European family weeps when the Romans fade away. What followed totted up to about a thousand years of chaos, murder and corruption. Evils which had been far off came into their hovels to a degree and scale most of them had never experienced before.
And the third thing the story of the scrolls and fragments teaches us is that it is so easy to become a sure and certain adherent of someone else's past desires and completely overlook all else. In this case that about two thousand years ago the tribal interests of most Europeans were best served by co-operation with the extremely powerful Rome. Also that if the rebels had come anywhere near doing any real damage the blast from the empire would not just have blown Israel into fragments, it would have stripped the country to its bedrock. And, supplemental to those two points, it is crystal clear no one has a clue as to whether anyone would have become any better off if the rebels had been victorious at that time. Two hundred and fifty years or so later, perhaps, who can say, if we supposed any change in history we must also suppose all other historical nodes fall simultaneously into play, giving us all countless might have beens.
Note 1 : The international team used sticky tape to hold manuscript fragments together. The tape has fallen off and left a destructive residue. It is quite Biblical that the word suffered least when left alone, only a little when in the hands of the people, and most when in the hands of the experts. For several years technicians have been trying to set the word back to what it was when it was written.
Note 2 : Some publications have suggested there was a Catholic plot to sanitise the international team's output. In regard to defence, we have here claims it is obvious no one can disprove. In regard to prosecution, no one has pointed toward anything in particular as ever having being spirited away, tampered with, or falsified. However, it is suspected that persons unknown visited Qumran from time to time when the team was not there, to assist what was apparently not wanted into the black market. Given the number of locals and collectors familiar with the site and what was going on there it should come with no great surprise to anyone except the most innocent if one day that is proved true.
Albert Dean
Albert : A few very brief comments ! Firstly, I think you’ve done well to summarise a complex subject in this way. Though you’ve highlighted your own specific ideas, your own views are bound to influence the telling of the story as a whole.
I think you are wrong to rule out books on the scrolls written prior to 1991 - an understanding of these is essential for a balanced view, as it is to this background that certain recent radical writers are reacting. I also think the view of the "international team", headed by Roland de Vaux OP, that you present is unduly negative. While not primarily an archaeologist, de Vaux seems to have been competent enough and did (eventually) write up the dig in a professional manner. He was primarily a scholar specialising in ancient Israel (as witnessed by a couple of thumping great tomes on my shelves - they are still standard text-books).
I think you underestimate the passion and idealism that can be generated by a small sect that sees itself as God’s elect.
One snide remark - a blitzkrieg lasting 50 years is oxymoronic !
I’m not convinced by this Damascus lark. Paul’s experiences on the way to Damascus where pivotal, and he includes a fair amount of detail about Damascus itself in his various accounts of the incident (in Acts 9, Acts 22, Acts 26 & 2 Corinthians 11:32-33), referring to its synagogues, how it was a city garrisoned by the governor of Syria & including the famous basket incident. Making this out to be Qumran is extremely forced, though if you want to make out that Paul was some sort of secret agent, you can presumably read what you like into what he wrote. What you get out of it would be completely random, of course.
When you say Paul only wanted part of the message, you seem to ignore the fact that Paul also had extra bits. He claimed that no-one taught him his Gospel, but that he had it by revelation, and that it included various "mysteries" (sacred secrets) - see Galatians 1:12 & Ephesians 3:3.
Getting back to Damascus, you must not forget that there was a similar speculative rumpus in 1910 following the publication by Schechter of the "Damascus Document" discovered in the Cairo Geniza in 1897 (and fragments of which were also later discovered in the Dead Sea caves). This document has many similarities to the Habakkuk Commentary & the Manual of Discipline, both "Dead Sea Scrolls", and mentions the Teacher of Righteousness.
Well, this is all specialised stuff ! I’m suspicious of any radical re-interpretations of early Christianity, in that they are highly speculative, give undue weight to a few texts that are extremely obscure and ignore all the normal evidence used to build up the standard picture.
Maybe someone would like to launch into the philosophy of historiography ? C. Behan McCullagh’s Justifying Historical Descriptions (CUP, 1984, ISBN 0-521-31830-0) is a good place to start.
Theo