Path: christian
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
From: nichael@bbn.com (Nichael Cramer)
Subject: Re: Dead Sea Scrolls
Organization: BBN, Interzone Office
References: <36qu92$6j1@geneva.rutgers.edu>
Reply-To: ncramer@bbn.com
Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu

av337@freenet.carleton.ca (Michael S. Kerr) writes:
	   LOOKING FOR INFO ON DEAD SEA SCROLLS.

An excellent book is Joseph Fitzmyer's _Responses to 101 Questions on
the DSS_ published by Paulist Press.  Lots of easily accessible
information written by one of the giants in the field.

      ...   Were the 'Essenes'
   actually an order of some kind or is this theory out the window?

There's no doubt the Essenes existed.  The only question is whether 1]
the people at Qumran were Essenes and 2] (a _possibly_ different
question) whether the people who are responsible for the DSS were Essenes.

The current majority scholarly opinion (held by Fitzmyer, for example)
is that that the folks at Qumran were responsible for the Scrolls and
that they were Essenes.

For a dissenting view (particular with the identification as Essenes)
see the article in the current issue of the Biblical Archeaology
Riview. 

   Where(or can) i get a publication of the complete Scrolls, 
   accurately translated?

First, you almost certainly do _not_ want translations of the
_complete_ DSS.  There are portions of are over 800 scrolls, the vast
majority of which are tiny fragments, some containing as little as a
few letters.

The best currently available translation (into English) is probably
Geza Vermes' _Dead Sea Scrolls_.  This contains translations of some
two dozen or so of the most complete and most important of the
scrolls.  (The 3rd edition was recently published.)

In December Brill is scheduled to publish Florentine Garcia Martinez's
_The Dead Sea Scrolls Translated_.  This will contain translations of
200[!] of the texts.  (NOTE: This book was original published in
Spanish.)

For most of the others --and again these are primarily fragments of
use only to the most highly technical work-- you would have to resort
to various journal articles.

(OTOH if someone were interested in examining the originals in their
full glory, the standard reference is the series _Discoveries in the
Judean Desert_ published by Clarendon.  Any well stocked university
library system should have these.)

         ... Why was access to the Scrolls only
   given a select few individuals and unreasonably denied to many]
   others?

This is certainly the way that this was played out in the press but
this is not really an accurate accounting of what happened.

1] Publication of the majority of the useful Scroll proceeded without
any undo postponement.  For example major _popular_ translations of
the Scrolls (e.g. the first edition of Vermes' book above) were being
published within about 10 years of the discovery of the scrolls.

2] The assignment of newly discovered manuscripts to a single scholar
(or a small group of scholars) is the *absolutely*standard* procedure
for dealing with the publication of such discoveries.  While there may
have been some problems in this particular case, there was _nothing_
special going on here.

3] The only manuscripts "withheld" were those from Cave 11.  When
discovered, this cave was filled with a heap of debris "over a metre
deep".  Mixed into this garbage were literally hundreds of scroll
fragments (many the size of a fingernail).  To state the problem
(over)simply: this is not exactly something that can be sorted out
overnight.

Now it surely true that all of this could have happened a lot faster
and certainly acedemic territoriality was in full bloom (a "scandal"
is usually the politest way in which this described).  But all this
silliness about the Scrolls being "hidden" or secrets being kept (my
personal favorite is the "suppression by the Vatican" model) is simply
attributable to the standard popular-press feeding frenzy.

(Again, for more on this, see Fitzmyer's book above.)

      ... Do the Dead Sea Scrolls shed any light on Jesus?

None whatsoever.

...well, at least not directly.  From the DSS we can learn facts about
the environment, the world and the religious gestalt in which the NT
was born.  But the DSS contain nothing _directly_ bearing on any NT
matters.

   Curious to know and i hope some of you might help me out here.

Hope this helps.

   mike kerr
   --


--
Nichael                                                              __
ncramer@bbn.com                                   Be as passersby  --IC

Path: christian
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
From: Helmut.Richter@lrz-muenchen.de (Helmut Richter)
Subject: Re: Dead Sea Scrolls
Organization: Leibniz-Rechenzentrum, Muenchen (Germany)
References: <8ud50o$l70$24@newsmonger.rutgers.edu>
Reply-To: Helmut.Richter@lrz-muenchen.de
Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu

"Salonica" <sfp_22@hotmail.com> writes:

>I just read some information on the dead sea scrolls and found it very
>interesting. I'd really like to know everyone's view on these writings and
>what the writings have done for christianity. Thanks

I can't give you everyone's view but only mine. I am not involved with
the study of the DSS, so I am fully dependent on what those people
write who know more than me. When they disagree, I cannot check who is
right, but after reading several books I get a picture which I share
with you.

One has to know that there are only 10 documents that are at least so
far complete that at least half of the text is readable contiguously:
seven with non-Biblical content, a scroll with Psalms, and two Isaiah
scrolls. One of them (1QJes_a) is in quite good shape, the other one
(1QJes_b) contains only 3/4 of the text which is still quite a lot. -
The remaining documents are about 1000 smaller pieces, many of them so
small that it is hardly feasible to assign any meaning to them.

The Bible (OT only) manuscripts are very valuable to understand the
text tradition of the OT; I'll come back to that again.

The non-Biblical texts provide insight into the community where they
originated, and thus also into the spiritual environment of the time
when Christianity started out.  Whether there is a direct relation to
the first Christians is debated, but the majority of scholars believes
that the paleographic dating (dating based on the shape and style of
writing), which has later been confirmed by the radiocarbon method,
excludes that. Rather, both dating methods seem to suggest that only
few documents can overlap in time with earliest Christianity, and
these are copies of older works. Of course, dating has its error
margins which can be interpreted differently by different people.

There is no *unambiguous* mention of anything Christian in the
scrolls. Whenever a connexion between the DSS and Christianity is
alleged, it relies on *interpretation* of the material and is thus
dependent on individual judgement of the facts.

Since their discovery, the DSS have seen times of high and of low
public interest. In the late 1980ies and early 1990ies, this interest
was stirred up by the book "The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception" by Michael
Baigent and Richard Leigh. It is based on an interpretation of the DSS
by Robert Eisenman, who found in the DSS so many allusions to
Christianity that he felt that the history of Jesus had to be
rewritten with these new insights.  Baigent and Leigh, who had earlier
written a book alleging the marriage of Jesus with Mary Magdalen and
their departure to southern France - hence the Holy Grail - after
Jesus's survival of the cross, found Eisenman's theory attractive.
In their book, they made believe (or even believed themselves) a huge
treason of the Vatican who tried to inhibit the new evidence which
would destroy Christian faith. However, the relationship of this piece
of crime fiction to reality seems to be somewhat scant.

Eisenman, in contrast to Baigent and Leigh, is an expert. He failed to
convince other experts in the field of his theory which is, in the
consensus of most scholars, outlandish and far-fetched. One should,
however, not hold Eisenman responsible for Baigent and Leigh's book
although he has condoned it.

>By the way, the site I read it at was www.exchangedlife.com

I do not consider this page overly reliable. It reads as if someone
with an axe to grind was carefully picking truths and half-truths out
of a large picture, as long as these corroborate his stance.
Interestingly, many of the arguments presented are those that could
have come from Baigent and Leigh, but without taking over their
anti-Christian attitude.

Here are some more WWW links pertaining to the DSS, where the content
is not so much condensed on what the WWW author wants to believe:

http://religion.rutgers.edu/iho/dss.html

  contains the history of the discovery and of the interpretation without
  a judgement who is right or wrong; at the end there are many valuable
  links to other material

http://www.ibiblio.org/expo/deadsea.scrolls.exhibit/overview.html

  contains pictures and contents descriptions of some scrolls and
  explanations of the environment where they originated

http://home.flash.net/~hoselton/deadsea/bibliog.htm

  contains a long bibliography

For all I know, the booklet "Responses to 101 Questions on the Dead
Sea Scrolls" by Fitzmyer is a good point to start with.


Now let me comment on a few passages in the WWW page:

* Scholars were able to reach back a further two thousand years in

one thousand would have been enough: from 1100 AD to around 0.

* time to examine biblical texts that had lain undisturbed in the
* desert caves during all of the intervening centuries. The scholars
* discovered that the Hebrew manuscript copies of the most
* authoritative Hebrew text, Textus Recepticus, used by the King James

The term "Textus Receptus" is usually only applied to the collection
of *Greek* NT manuscripts the KJV translators used. This is not per se
important, but I find it interesting that the discovery of the DSS
shall now serve a different purpose, to wit defending the KJV's choice
of manuscripts (well, they hadn't that much choice, but that's a
different story).

* translators in 1611, were virtually identical to these ancient Dead
* Sea Scrolls. After carefully comparing the manuscripts they

No. Not to all of them. The scroll 1QJes_a shows many deviations,
1QJes_b does not. The new insight is indeed, and this is what the
author probably wants to say, that the consonant text underlying the
Masoretic text must be several hundred years older than formerly
believed. But one sees as well that alternate text forms have survived
until Jesus's time, and been kept in the same library. Perhaps, the
standardisation on one and only one text, with the extreme care taken
when copying, did not start before the destruction of the Temple.

* discovered that, aside from a tiny number of spelling variations,
* not a single word was altered from the original scrolls in the caves
* from the much copied A.D. 1100 manuscripts used by the Authorized
* King James Version translators in 1611.

"not a single word" would be an interesting allegation to check.  I
have not the material here to provide counterexamples but would really
be surprised if it were true even for 1QJes_b.

* [...]

* To the great joy and surprise of many scholars, the scrolls contain
* definite references to the New Testament and, most importantly, to
* Jesus of Nazareth. In the last few years several significant scrolls
* were released that shed new light on the New Testament and the life
* of Jesus. One of the most extraordinary of these scrolls released in
* 1991 actually referred directly to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

Not only allusions or parallels, but "definite references". A scroll
"referred directly" to Jesus without ever mentioning his name. Strong
statements for which one would like to see evidence. I do not know how
the author of this WWW page comes to these insights, since after all I
know, not even Eisenman comes to such conclusions.

* [...]

* The fragment containing "Gennesaret" appears to be a quotation of
* the passage referring to the feeding of the five thousand found in
* Mark 6:52,53 which states: "For they considered not the miracle of
* the loaves: for their heart was hardened. And when they had passed
* over, they came into the land of Gennesaret, and drew to the shore."

This fragment (7Q5) is a piece of a bit more than an inch of diameter.
It contains remainders of 5 lines of text, 10 clearly visible letters,
and 10 more that could each be more than one of the letters of the
Greek alphabet.  It does not fit on any known Greek text, Biblical or
extra-Biblical.  Only if you read one letter in a non-obvious way, you
can get a match with a *yet* *unknown* variant of Mk.6:52-53, that is
a variant where three words are missing compared to all other
manuscripts of Mark (including the "Textus Receptus" of course!). In
other words, you have to "correct" *both* the snippet 7Q5 and Mark to
make them match. A WWW page endorsing this identification is
http://members.aol.com/egweimi/7q5.htm where you find also a picture
showing you how much of "GENNESARET" is written on it.  From the
picture and the discussion you may understand why not everybody
immediately finds this identification plausible.

That 7Q5 is always taken as evidence for NT texts in the DSS may show
you that the evidence in the remaining cases is probably not really
much better. Again, the statements in the WWW article seem to be
exaggerated at best.

Helmut Richter