Customer Reviews

The Copper Scroll 3QI5: A Reevaluation: A New Reading, Translation, and Commentary (Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah, Volume 25)

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Re my previously submitted Review. If you use it, please alter the word 'eastwards; - 4 lines from the bottom to 'westwards' , and correct the word 'located' in line 10.

Judah Lefkovits is an acknowledged 'expert'on the Copper Scroll and this latest work, in gathering together previous publications by him and others, sets out the currrent position scholarship has reached. In this respect it is a comprehensive and useful survey. However, like many previous studies it resolves none of the puzzling aspects of what was, to the Qumran-Essenes, probably their most important document. Why does the text contain so many paleo-Hebrew connections, unique word structures, a numbering system unknown in Judaea, weight terms which appear to be absurd, detailed references to places no-one has been able to positively identify, and treasures no-one has locaetd. Lefkovits goes deeply into all these puzzles, but comes out with no satisfactory answers, because he,like previous scholars, bases his study on flawed assumptions. For example, the weight terms in the Copper Scroll, written as a Hebrew Khaff, are read as as Biblical Talents equivalent to about 35kg. This gives totals of 25tonnes of gold and 65tonnes of silver,where weight terms are listed. John Allegro, the first scholar to translate the Copper Scroll into English, back in 1955-56,immediately realised the weight term could not be a Talent and arbitrarily downgraded it to a lower unit. One only has to look in the Old Testament to the first reference to Talents, in Exodus 38 to see that each curtain socket for the Tabernacle required one Talent. The use of 35kg of silver per sockect would have been absurd and the entire structure would have collpased under the weight of 3500kg (3.5tonnes)of silver. Similarly terms like 'nahal hagadol', translated by Lefkovits and others as 'great river', are meaningless in the context of Qumran and Jerusalem. All these problems are resolved if the basic premise for treasure locations is shifted eastwards, and Egyptian influences taken into account. Not only are they resolved, the strange Greek letters become clear,and some of the treasure is located, as descibed in my book ' The Copper Scroll Decoded'