Golden Anniversary of the Scrolls

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There, on a moonlit night beside the ruins of Qumran, was the voice of Yigael Yadin, Israel’s most illustrious archaeologist, dead these 13 years, reading in the original language from a letter by Shimon bar Kosiba, better known as Bar-Kokhba, leader of the Second Jewish Revolt against Rome (132–135 A.D.). Yadin’s voice, recorded in 1960 at the home of Israel’s president, was loud and clear as he announced, “Mr. President, I have the honor to tell you that we have discovered 15 dispatches written or dictated by the last president of ancient Israel over 1,800 years ago.” This time, however, his voice was accompanied by live music, part of a magnificent cantata for orchestra, soloists and a young girl’s chorus, each section a tribute to a different text from the Dead Sea Scrolls. Written by kibbutznik Michael Wolpe of Kibbutz Sde-Boker (where David Ben Gurion lived), the beautifully rendered composition followed a seated gourmet banquet for 300 (including a contingent of 30 from the Biblical Archaeology Society’s Travel/Study program), all set against the floodlit backdrop of the limestone cliffs where the intact Dead Sea Scrolls were found by Bedouin of the Ta‘amireh tribe 50 years ago: the Isaiah Scroll, with all 66 chapters; the Temple Scroll, with its detailed description of the visionary temple at the end of time; the Psalm Scroll, which included psalms omitted from the canonical psalter; and the so-called Manual of Discipline, a kind of constitution for a strange Jewish sect that had broken with the Jerusalem Temple and whose ways and habits bear striking resemblances to ancient literary references to an ascetic, communitarian group of Jews known as Essenes.

It was a gala end to a scholarly conference celebrating the 50th anniversary of the discovery of what has become known as Qumran Cave 1, in which seven intact scrolls were recovered in 1947, a number that eventually increased to more than 800 different manuscripts, the greatest archaeological discovery of the century. The evening, in late July, included reminiscences of Harvard’s Frank Cross, a member of the original publication team, and of Joseph Aviram, longtime director of the Israel Exploration Society, who participated in the search for scrolls more than 40 years ago. Their reminiscences were read for them, as neither was able to attend. Presiding was Ernest Frerichs, executive director of the Dorot Foundation, in effect representing its deceased director, Joy Ungerleider-Mayerson, who had done so much to support Israeli archaeology, and whose family had contributed the funds to build the Shrine of the Book in Jerusalem, where most of the intact scrolls are housed.

The Israelis have a flair for scholarly conferences. Not just a bunch of academic presentations, these meetings feature festive celebrations as well. The Dead Sea Scroll conference, at which more than a hundred papers were presented, had opened five days earlier with a ceremony on the plaza of the Shrine of the Book; festivities included greetings from Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Jerusalem mayor Ehud Olmert, former mayor Teddy Kollek, Israel Museum director James Snyder and Shrine of the Book director Adolfo Roitman, followed by a musical offering 064and a scholarly paper by chief scroll editor Emanuel Tov.

A special session took place at the École Biblique et Archéologique Française, a peaceful 19th-century Dominican monastery and school (with the best Biblical and archaeological library in Jerusalem). The papers given there were devoted to the recently restored and conserved Copper Scroll, a mysterious list of tons of hidden gold and silver that many believe represents part of the Temple treasure, secreted when the Roman attack on Jerusalem seemed imminent. (The attack came in 70 A.D.; the city was destroyed and the Temple burned.) The thoroughly oxidized Copper Scroll, found by archaeologists in 1952, has now in effect been reconstituted by scientists at the Paris-based EDF-Valectra Laboratory using extraordinary high-tech procedures. These modern procedures contrast sharply with the rude dental-type saw that was used 43 years ago to cut the two rolls of the Copper Scroll into 23 semicircular strips. Equally remarkable new high-tech photographs allowed the École Biblique’s Father Émile Puech, who is preparing a new edition of the scroll, to see each letter clearly, sometimes enabling him to make important new readings. Whether we will ever be able to identify any of the sites with certainty, let alone find the buried treasure, which includes not only huge quantities of gold and silver but Temple utensils, remains problematic.

Most of the talks at the conference presented solid new scholarship; there were no bombshells. Much of the excitement took place in the halls and concerned an ostracon (an inscribed potsherd) found at Qumran in a small excavation in 1996 headed by James Strange of the University of South Florida. The ostracon was published just a few weeks before the conference by Frank Cross and Esther Eshel of Hebrew University (who received financial support for their research from the Biblical Archaeology Society). According to their reading, the ostracon mentions the yahad, or community, referred to in the scrolls. As they interpret the ostracon, it is a deed of gift, ceding to the Qumran yahad the property of a novitiate about to become a member. If this reading is correct, it is the strongest evidence yet uncovered connecting the scrolls to the site. But the Cross-Eshel reading is already being questioned by leading Israeli paleographers. Will the doubters come up with a better, more plausible reading? Or will the Cross-Eshel reading hold? Are the first two letters of the supposed yahad really yod and het? Will we ever know for certain? Stay tuned. Cross is preparing a report for BAR, but it is sure to be questioned by some scholars.

Another discussion concerned the date that the proto-Masoretic text of the Hebrew Bible was standardized. The Masoretic text, or MT, is the textus receptus of the Hebrew Bible. At Qumran, fragments of more than 200 Biblical books predating the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. were found. Most of them are similar to the Masoretic text. Scholars call them proto-Masoretic. But many of them are closer to the Greek text known as the Septuagint (or LXX). Still others are closer to the Samaritan Pentateuch. And still others cannot be identified with any of these textual streams. Many scholars, like James Sanders of the Ancient Biblical Manuscript Center in Claremont, California, characterize the Qumran period as one of textual fluidity: Different texts were recognized and their differences accepted. Another group of about 20 Biblical texts from other caves in the Judean desert date to the second century A.D. These, however, are all proto-Masoretic. Some leading scholars, including 065Hebrew University’s Shemaryahu Talmon, as well as Sanders, therefore see the period after the Roman destruction of Jerusalem as one of great text-critical activity, in which the Hebrew text was largely standardized. According to Talmon, this was because after the destruction of the Temple, the synagogue assumed increasing importance, and the Bible began to be read as part of the synagogue service. For this, a standardized text was needed, and thus with this impetus the proto-Masoretic text was developed.

In a long discussion out in the hall, Emanuel Tov, a leading authority on the development of the text of the Bible and the chief editor of the scroll publication team, explained to me why he disagreed. According to Tov, the proto-Masoretic text was already formed before 70 A.D. He sees little or no development between the proto-Masoretic texts found at Qumran, which was destroyed by the Romans in 68 A.D. on their way to Jerusalem, and those found in caves south of Qumran, dating to the second century A.D. This, for Tov, indicates that the proto-Masoretic text had been standardized earlier and existed alongside other versions. In the end, the proto-Masoretic version was chosen for the synagogue.

Further study of the Biblical texts from Qumran and from the wadis south of Qumran may one day tell us who is right.

For me, the Jerusalem Dead Sea Scroll conference provided a dramatic contrast to an international Dead Sea Scroll conference held in Spain in 1991, to which I was initially invited and, after purchasing a nonrefundable airplane ticket, was disinvited.^a At the time, I was the bête noire of the scroll establishment. This time I was invited not only to attend but even to give a paper.

In it I acknowledged what everyone knew: Dead Sea Scroll research is burgeoning. It is a time for celebration. Publication of the texts is proceeding at an increasingly rapid pace, and the scrolls are available to all. Israel Antiquities director Amir Drori maintains that the BAR campaign to free the scrolls had no effect. I took the occasion to make that case for him: By 1990 Emanuel Tov had been appointed associate editor (along with John Strugnell), and the official publication team had been greatly expanded (and included Jews and Israelis). By 1991, when BAS published the computer-reconstructed transcripts of the unpublished scrolls and the secret photographs of the fragments themselves, the publication bottleneck had already been broken. Whether I was entirely convincing I leave to my listeners and, ultimately, to the readers of the conference volume that will be published in a year or so.

In contrast to the publication of the scrolls, the publication of the final report on the excavation of Qumran seems stymied. The École Biblique’s Father Roland de Vaux, who led the excavations in the 1950s, died in 1971 without writing a final report. Nearly a decade ago, the École Biblique assigned the writing of the final report to a Belgian scholar, Robert Donceel, who brought his wife, Pauline Donceel-Voûte, on the project. But it is generally recognized that they will never write a final report as that term is used in the profession.^b

The École Biblique has published a volume containing photographs and de Vaux’s summaries.^c But much more could be done with the surviving artifacts and de Vaux’s field notes. These need to published—and published promptly. Unfortunately, many of the artifacts excavated by de Vaux are missing or lost. Israel Museum curator Yaakov Meshorer, Israel’s leading numismatist, began his lecture on the coins of Qumran by stating that this was the first time in 35 years of lecturing on coins that he has not used slides projected on a screen. The reason: Most of the coins from Qumran, on the basis of which de Vaux dated his strata, have disappeared. Meshorer added that he has “never seen any of the coins excavated at Qumran.”

One other sour note occurred at a session chaired by Ben-Gurion University professor Elisha Qimron, who successfully sued the Biblical Archaeology Society, and me, for publishing a copy of his reconstructed Hebrew text of the scroll known as MMT.^d The case is now on appeal to Israel’s Supreme Court.^e At the opening of the session, Qimron announced that he wished to record his objection with the organizing committee—and invited others to do likewise—to their allowing someone who had been found guilty of copyright infringement on a reconstruction of one of the scrolls to present a paper. Guess who? But this was a session that I did not attend, so I didn’t hear it; it was only reported to me. Otherwise, it was a warm, wonderful conference, both a scholarly and a social success.

There, on a moonlit night beside the ruins of Qumran, was the voice of Yigael Yadin, Israel’s most illustrious archaeologist, dead these 13 years, reading in the original language from a letter by Shimon bar Kosiba, better known as Bar-Kokhba, leader of the Second Jewish Revolt against Rome (132–135 A.D.). Yadin’s voice, recorded in 1960 at the home of Israel’s president, was loud and clear as he announced, “Mr. President, I have the honor to tell you that we have discovered 15 dispatches written or dictated by the last president of ancient Israel over 1,800 years ago.” This time, […]