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Dead Sea Scrolls Update

Is the Vatican Suppressing the Dead Sea Scrolls?

By Hershel Shanks

A book that will soon be available in the United States was recently published in England under the title The Dead Sea Scroll Deception by Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh (Jonathan Cape, 1991).1 The book’s thesis is that the Vatican is suppressing the Dead Sea Scrolls because they will undermine vital Christian doctrine. The authors’ first bit of evidence is the unconscionable publication delays: Of over 500 texts found in Qumran Cave 4 beginning in 1952, only approximately 100 have been published after nearly 40 years. (The 300 texts from other caves have almost all been published.) Even more […]

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Footnotes

1.

Avi Katzman, “Chief Dead Sea Scroll Scholar Denounces Judaism,” BAR 17:01. An earlier publication in Hebrew appeared in Ha‘aretz, a Tel Aviv daily.

2.

“Leading Dead Sea Scroll Scholar Denounces Delay,” BAR 16:02.

3.

Joseph A. Fitzmyer, “A Visit with M. Josef Milik,” BAR 16:04.

4.

Otto Betz, “Was John the Baptist an Essene?” Bible Review, December 1990.

5.

Lawrence H. Schiffman, “The Significance of the Scrolls,” Bible Review, October 1990.

6.

“BAR Editor Unwelcome in Madrid—Disinvited to DSS Congress,” Queries & Comments, BAR 17:03.

7.

“An Unpublished Dead Sea Scroll Text Parallels Luke’s Infancy Narrative,” BAR 16:02.

Endnotes

1.

The book is scheduled to be published in the United States by Summit Books (a subsidiary of Simon & Schuster) in January 1992.

2.

The New Jerome Biblical Commentary states: “Catholic critical scholarship from DAS [Divino afflante Spiritu] until 1970 was marked by intensive growth.

“Catholic biblical scholars received official church encouragement through two primary documents the PBC’s [Pontifical Biblical Commission’s] ‘Instruction on the Historical Truth of the Gospels’ (1964) and Vatican II’s Dei Verbum (Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, 1965). The former document, in particular, recognized that the Gospels consisted of several layers of tradition and thus are not literal or chronological accounts of the life of Jesus. This position confirmed the results of biblical scholarship while setting the stage for further developments in the scientific, critical study of the NT [New Testament] among Catholic biblical scholars.

“Catholic NT scholarship increasingly made its own mark in the study of the NT. It succeeded in convincing more intelligent Catholics that the ultraconservative biblical positions of the past were no longer tenable and that the new approaches had values of their own which could feed worship and spirituality. It incorporated the results of scientific NT study into the discussion of issues with dogmatic implications, e.g., the limitations of Jesus’ knowledge regarding himself, the future, and the church, qualifications in the reliability of Acts as a guide to how the church historically emerged; the extent of creativity exercised in the formation of the Gospel tradition; the limited historicity of the infancy narratives.” (“Modern New Testament Criticism,” by John S. Kselman, S.S., and Ronald D. Witherup, S.S., in The New Jerome Bible Commentary, ed. Raymond Brown, S.S., Joseph Fitzmeyer, S.J., and Roland E. Murphy, O. Carm. [Prentice-Hall, 1990], pp. 1142, 1143.)

3.

John Allegro, The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1970).

4.

Emile Puech, “Un Hymn Essénien en Partie Retrouvé et les Béatitudes,” Revue de Qumran 13, nos. 49–52 (Oct. 1988).