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15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
What are the scrolls?, May 23, 2003
Hershel Shanks, editor of Biblical Archaeology Review, has compiled in his book, Understanding the Dead Sea Scrolls, a collection of some of the most important articles on the Dead Sea Scrolls to appear in the magazine and its companion, Bible Review in the half-century since they were discovered. The Find
Scholars Harry Thomas Frank and Frank Moore Cross discuss in this section the initial discovery of the scrolls, the political intrigue surrounding their sale and acquisition, the difficulties of ascertaining what in fact had been found, and some of the historical context behind the scrolls, including dating the scrolls. This is a tale of Bedouins, an antiquities dealer (not always on the up-and-up) named Kando, dealings with the Orthodox and Roman Catholic clergy hierarchies, the British Mandate administration, and the newly-formed Israeli and Jordanian administrations. Sometimes the history takes bizarre twists -- the astute reader of the Wall Street Journal would have first seen reference to the scrolls in the classified, for sale. Where They Came From
In this section, articles by noted scholars Lawrence Schiffman, James VanderKam, Raphael Levy and Hershel Shanks discuss the possible origins of the scrolls. Were they developed by the Essenes, a shadowy sect that might have encamped at Qumran? Were they written by another minor group of Sadducees? Were the Essenes an off-shoot of the Sadducees? Of course, not a lot of people realise that the first discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls occurred fifty years prior to the discovery in the caves near Qum'ran, and hundreds of miles from the Dead Sea, in a genizah in Cairo. There, in the repository for worn-out holy texts, a text was found that scholars have grouped with the Dead Sea Scrolls in paleographic and content terms. This is the Damascus Document (try explaining that a Dead Sea Scroll entitled the Damascus Document was in fact found neither in Damascus nor near the Dead Sea, and you begin to understand the confusion that has always surrounded the scrolls!). The Temple Scroll
In this section, the longest of the scrolls is addressed by none other than the legendary Yigael Yadin, together with Magen Broshi, Shanks, and Hartmut Stegemann. This scroll has an intriguing history, too, having been negotiated for by a Virginian clergyman who gives a very different account of the 'return' of the scroll to the Israeli officials than does Yadin. According to Yadin, this scroll represented the Torah of the Essenes. Stegemann addresses the question of 'how can you tell if a document is sectarian or biblical?' With this question, he opens up the possibility that his book belonged as part of the Bible, or even the Torah, for Judaism at the time of the Roman occupation. A startling conjecture! The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Bible, Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism
These sections are perhaps the heart of the matter for most people who have an interest in the scrolls. While archaeological discovery and intrigue might make for entertaining and even educational reading, the true value in the scrolls lies in what they do to enlighten us in our knowledge of religion. Scholars Frank Moore Cross, Ronald Hendel, VanderKam, Otto Betz, Schiffman, and Shanks explore matters of textual accuracy and variation with current Bibles, address a few particular passages that held particular meaning or insight in variation from the current texts, address questions such as 'was John the Baptist an Essene?' The Copper Scroll
P. Kyle McCarter discusses the Copper Scroll, a piece unique in substance as well as content. The scroll was inscribed on thin sheets of copper, thus obviously a piece of great importance. It is written in a variety of Hebrew different from all other scrolls, and does not fit into any of the scroll categories (biblical, sectarian, etc.). Through political vicissitudes, the scroll is in fact in Jordanian ownership, who prize it highly, rather than the museums in Jerusalem. McCarter discusses the meaning of the scroll, which may be a treasure guide (not a map, but rather an accounting) of the Temple treasures and other religious holdings during the period between the first and second revolts against Rome (the years 70-130 CE). Reconstructing the Scrolls
Stegemann discusses here the time-consuming and nearly-impossible task of reconstructing the scrolls. Unlike the Temple scroll, most of the Dead Sea Scrolls in fact consist of fragments and bits of parchment, that have been worn away by time, rodent-chompings, water and fire damage, and mis-handling damage. Sometimes the text left a mirror-impression on the opposite side of the rolled scrolls -- sometimes this mirror-impression, highlighted by photographic technique, is easier to read than the actual text. Controversy and the Scrolls
Controversy has followed the scrolls since the day they were discovered. The bedouins who found them wondered what in fact they were, and what to do with them. The newly forming state of Israel was at odds with much of the world; they did not have resources to track all of the scrolls (in fact, Kando and other antiquities dealers maintained that there might be more scrolls being hidden, but not recoverable due to heavy-handed tactics used to recover the scrolls to Israeli ownership). Given that most of the Dead Sea area was in Jordanian administration, the task of scroll scholarship was turned over to a predominantly-Christian academic establishment; in fact, it was problematic to include Jewish scholars, given the political situation. More recent scroll developments have both put Jewish scholars at the head of research teams, and opened the scrolls for all to see, albeit, not without lawsuits and claims of academic and intellectual property theft, as if the scrolls 'belonged' to particular scholars. Given the lack of progress of release of the scrolls for decades, speculation arose that the church (most scholars working on the scrolls in the early years were Roman Catholic clerics) was suppressing information that would be damaging or embarrassing to the church.
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