Dead Sea Scroll Variation on “Show and Tell”—It’s Called “Tell, But No Show”

018

You’re not going to believe this!

Next summer, at the Biblical Archaeology Congress in Jerusalem, Joseph Baumgarten, newly assigned to edit and publish the coveted Damascus Documents from the Dead Sea Scrolls, will, after more than 35 years, DESCRIBE his treasure. Describe, mind you, not show. He’ll describe them for you, BUT HE WON’T LET YOU SEE THEM.

You heard me right. He will tell you how many fragments there are, perhaps how long they are, what kind of writing is used and what the general contents are. He may even tantalize you by reading a few lines. BUT HE WON’T SHOW YOU THE DOCUMENTS! NOT EVEN PHOTOGRAPHS!

The scholars will gather in Jerusalem, crowd the room eager to catch his every word, grateful for any hint of what the secret documents say, inwardly seething with resentment.

Here we go again! MMT all over!^a

The Damascus Documents about which Baumgarten will speak have special significance. In 1897, Solomon Schechter nearly emptied the famous Cairo Genizah,^b removing about 140,000 documents, a cache many times larger than the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were first discovered only 50 years later. Among the documents in the Cairo Genizah were two somewhat differing versions of a text now known as the Damascus Document, designated by the scholarly siglum CD—for the Cairo Damascus Document.^c

Schechter published the A and B versions of CD in 1910, together with a prescient introduction in which he speculated that, although his copies of the Damascus Document dated from somewhere between the 10th and 12th centuries, they were late copies of a document that had actually been composed before the Roman destruction of the Temple in 70 C.E.^d According to Schechter, CD probably represented the doctrines of a Jewish sect that opposed the religious leaders of the Jerusalem Temple; the sect was originally led by someone referred to as the “Teacher of Righteousness”; his enemy was “The Man of Scoffing.” The laws of the sect reflected a fierce piety and a highly structured organization whose laws were to be observed by the sect until the Messiah arrived at the “end of days.”

Schechter of course had no way of knowing the extraordinary resemblances between the unknown Jewish sect he was positing based on his study of CD and the sect represented in the library that was later discovered in the Qumran caves.

Almost from the moment the first Dead Sea Scrolls came into their hands in 1948, scholars were struck by the similarities between the doctrines of the Cairo Damascus Document and some of the Dead Sea Scroll documents like the Manual of Discipline and the Habbakuk commentary. “The similarity of the contents was unmistakable,” wrote the distinguished Yale scholar Millar Burrows after his initial examination of these scrolls in 1948, when they were brought to the American School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem.

Then, in September 1952, Bedouin tribesmen discovered additional scroll material in Qumran caves now identified as Caves IV and VI. The fragments in Cave VI included parts of another copy of the Damascus Document! In Cave IV, pieces of at least seven copies 019of the Damascus Document were found! These copies date to about 75–80 B.C.E. Obviously, this text, preserved in at least eight copies, was terribly important to the Qumran sect.

The Damascus Documents—both from Cairo and Qumran—have since become the most important manuscripts for understanding the originals of the Qumran sect, whether Essene or otherwise.^e They are also extremely important for understanding the laws by which the sect was governed. The Damascus Documents may also reflect laws of other Jewish groups at the time.

Shortly after their discovery, the Damascus Documents from the Dead Sea caves were assigned for publication to J. T. Milik, then a Polish priest. He has since left the priesthood and lives in Paris.

For more than 35 years while they were under his control, Milik never published the Damascus Documents, and scholars were not permitted to see them. He has said that the introduction in his texts of the Damascus Documents is different from the introduction in the Cairo texts, and that some of the laws differ. But that’s all we know. The documents themselves remain secret.

Then, in 1989, BAR received a letter from Magen Broshi, curator of the Shrine of the Book in Jerusalem, who said that Milik had reassigned some of his unpublished Qumran texts.^f 020Broshi did not tell us which documents had been reassigned.

On a subsequent trip to Jerusalem, we learned that Milik’s reassignment included the Damascus Documents, which Milik gave to Professor Joseph Baumgarten of Baltimore Hebrew University.

There was no official announcement of the reassignment. No word from chief scroll editor John Strugnell. Nothing from Israel’s Department of Antiquities, which supposedly now controls the scrolls. Nothing from the Israeli Oversight Committee, acting on behalf of the Department of Antiquities. To this day, no one knows the terms and conditions of the reassignment, how it came about, who approved it, who chose Baumgarten or even exactly when it happened. All that can be said is that scroll assignments move in mysterious ways. As it turned out, the scroll reassignment from Milik to Baumgarten may have been less than meets the eye. There is now a question as to whether there was a reassignment.

Professor Philip Davies of the University of Sheffield in England had previously sought unsuccessfully to look at the Damascus Documents that Milik controlled. Davies considers these documents essential to his own research. So when he learned of the reassignment to Baumgarten, Davies wrote to Baumgarten asking whether he, Davies, could come to Baltimore to see photographs of the Damascus Documents (see letter). “I don’t want to cause you any personal embarrassment,” Davies wrote, but “I badly want to consult these fragments … I have wanted to see them for fifteen years!” According to the rules of the game (i.e., scholarly convention), the individual scroll editor has absolute authority over who gets to see the scrolls. In this way, an editor can allow—and often has allowed—his students to see and work on a text, while at the same time denying access to senior colleagues. Because of this convention, Davies was, as he explained to Baumgarten, “obliged to ask you directly for access,” despite the possibility of embarrassing Baumgarten.

Davies added, however, “You may take it for granted that this access is for private study only and I shall not anticipate your own efforts in any way by publishing any material I see.”

Baumgarten’s prompt reply reflects what can perhaps best be compared to Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus—in Baumgarten’s case, it was a conversion on the road to the Damascus Documents. In short, the outsider had become the insider.

“I need not tell you that there are many scholars interested in seeing the 4Q [Cave IV Qumran] fragments,” Baumgarten wrote. Nor did Baumgarten forget what it was like being an outsider: “Having myself spent over three decades in patient waiting for the publication of scrolls relevant to rabbinic studies, I fully understand your desire to see the 4Q fragments of the Damascus Document now.”

But Baumgarten never directly answered Davies’ request to see photographs of the documents. The implication was nevertheless clear: The answer was no.

021

After this rejection, Davies and a colleague—Robert Eisenman of California State University, Long Beach, who had also unsuccessfully sought access to Dead Sea Scroll fragments^g—wrote a letter to BAR, which appears in Queries & Comments, in this issue, reflecting their frustration and outrage.

Frankly, we ourselves were a little surprised at Davies’ turn-down, so we called Baumgarten to see if we could determine what lay behind his denial of access to a recognized scholar.

At first Baumgarten gave us the customary reasons we hear from the scroll editors who control the texts: “It’s a practical problem. If we let Davies see it, why not others? Then one would have to disseminate raw material without a check [on whether it was used accurately]. I do not believe this would advance knowledge of the field.” When pressed, Baumgarten responded: “That’s not the way it’s done in scholarship. You’re asking me to send it to the New York Times and then to the wind.” And then somewhat defensively: “I’m not responsible for the fact he [Davies] has had to wait for 25 years.”

Part way through the conversation, however, Baumgarten shifted his ground. He advanced a new and different basis for denying Davies access, a basis of which there was not even a hint in his letter to Davies: Baumgarten, to whom the texts had supposedly been reassigned, was not authorized to let anyone else see them.

Anyone who wants to see these texts must still get Milik’s authorization—and Milik, as is well known, doesn’t answer correspondence. According to Baumgarten:

“I essentially was asked to work on [the Damascus Documents] as part of a project by Milik … It was started by Milik … It must be cleared with him to release it … I am not in charge of the project. I am only contributing an evaluation from the viewpoint of halacha [Jewish religious law]. I’m an outsider called in because of the nature of the material.”

So the Damascus Documents have not been reassigned—or have they? Confusion added to confusion, with no place to turn for clarification. Poor Professor Davies, he must feel like a character in a Kafka novel.

Baumgarten himself would have no objection if the authorities in Jerusalem decided to release photographs of all the unpublished texts, he told me: “It’s not up to me. If the authorities in Jerusalem decided to release photographs of all the [unpublished] texts, that would be fine with me. I wouldn’t object.”

I asked Baumgarten how many lines were preserved in the fragments of the Damascus Documents from Qumran. He said he didn’t know. I asked if he could give me an estimate. He said he couldn’t do that either. Apparently this was information not to be released so easily. It was then that he promised to DESCRIBE his precious treasure at the Jerusalem Biblical Archaeology Congress next summer.

You’re not going to believe this!