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Mistakes in scholarship are inevitable. When they occur, they can lead other scholars into further error. One error begets another. I recently read a fascinating article, by a young graduate student at Hebrew University named Yosef Garfinkel, about an error made by the great Biblical archaeologist William F. Albright.1 Nearly 60 years ago, Albright identified the personal name Yokan—found on a seal impression on a jar handle that Albright had excavated at Tell Beit Mirsim—with the name of the next-to-last king of Judah, Jehoiachin. Jehoiachin ruled for only three months in 598/597 B.C.E. On this basis, Albright dated the storage jar, all the other pottery associated with it and the stratum in which it was found to about 600 B.C.E. We now know that this type of jar handle and the pottery associated with it must be dated to the late eighth century B.C.E., about 100 years earlier. Yokan cannot be identified with King Jehoiachin of Judah. Albright’s error as described in Garfinkel’s article “was replicated and misled others.” The error “persisted for half a century.” Only about a decade ago was the error corrected, and, unfortunately, many handbooks still mislead students because they are based on the older scholarship. Garfinkel concludes:
“It now seems quite amazing that until a decade ago our picture of the chronology and stratigraphy of the period of the kingdom of Judah was fundamentally incorrect.”2
Scholars try very hard to avoid mistakes. But, in the end, they inevitably make them.
On the other hand, not all mistakes are inevitable. Some result from shoddy scholarship. A prime example is John M. Allegro’s publication of the fragments assigned to him from Cave 4 of the Dead Sea Scroll library. In Joseph Fitzmyer’s bibliography of major Dead Sea Scroll publications, Fitzmyer tells his readers that Allegro’s work “must be used with caution. … Criticism of this volume has been severe.”3
Allegro’s publication is sometimes defended on the ground that at least he got the material out. This is true, but it seems that a scholar could have been found who would have been both prompt and reasonably accurate. Today, everyone in the field knows they should not rely on Allegro’s publication alone but should consult Professor John Strugnell’s extensive article (longer than Allegro’s original publication) correcting Allegro’s errors.
It is sometimes argued that too much pressure on the scholars who have publication rights to the hundreds of unpublished Dead Sea Scroll fragments will also result in error. This argument was recently made by Professor Eugene Ulrich of Notre Dame University in an interview in the Jerusalem Post.4 The pace of publication of the Dead Sea Scrolls has been too fast, Ulrich contends, rather than too slow. Ulrich cited as an example the prompt publication of the Isaiah scroll known as 1 QIsab by Hebrew University professor E. L. Sukenik 36 years ago. However, Ulrich failed to show how the errors were related to the prompt publication or that the errors would have been avoided if Sukenik had delayed publishing the scroll. Most likely, the errors resulted from Sukenik’s use of the Masoretic text (the received Hebrew text) of Isaiah as a model. So the errors would have occurred whether Sukenik worked quickly or more slowly. In short, so-called careful scholarship can sometimes be used as an excuse for unpardonable delay in publication.
Although scholars should—and must—take the necessary time to be careful, this is plainly not the reason for the long delay in Dead Sea Scroll publication. This delay is simply the result of scholars taking on more assignments than they could reasonably complete in a lifetime and refusing to publish until they have written extensive commentaries on the texts. In the meantime, they refuse to let scholars generally see the unpublished texts. That is the worst sin.
Regardless of how scholarly errors occur, they do indeed mislead. Scholars who rely on other scholars’ work—and they inevitably do—must be careful to keep up with the literature to know when errors are identified, so as not to incorporate inaccuracies into their own work. And students will inevitably read older works without realizing that they are outdated and inaccurate. There is no easy solution.
There is, however, another kind of scholarly error—one that results from scholarly concealment. And that brings me to the case of MMT. The concealment of MMT has misled a generation of scholars struggling to understand the origins of the people who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls and the nature and sources of their beliefs.
MMT is a still-unpublished text of only about 120 lines, yet everyone agrees that it will revolutionize Qumran studies, as Dead Sea Scroll studies are called by scholars (after the Wadi Qumran where the ancient library was found nearly 40 years ago).
Since the discovery of this vast library, scholars have puzzled over who the people were who wrote the scrolls. Were they really 065Essenes, as most scholars have concluded? What were their origins, what were their beliefs, what were the sources of their beliefs? A whole generation of scholars has been laboring to answer these questions. Literally hundreds of articles have been written on these questions—and all without the benefit, it turns out, of a critical document that was readily available. A whole generation of scholars was working in the dark—unnecessarily!
MMT was found in the now-famous Cave 4 of the Wadi Qumran, which contained fragments of over 500 different texts. MMT, however, is unique among Qumran texts in that it is in the form of a letter. Its importance to the Dead Sea Scroll community itself is evident from the fact that fragments of at least six copies of MMT were found in the cave.
More than 35 years ago, when eight scholars divvied up the contents of Cave 4 among themselves for publication, MMT was assigned to Professor John Strugnell of Harvard, now the chief editor of the scroll publication team. At the time of the assignment, MMT had no special designation; its unique significance was not known. It was simply one of a number of texts.
When Strugnell began to appreciate the unusual importance of MMT is unknown. In any event, he kept it under wraps for more than 25 years. No one else knew of its existence. Meanwhile, Qumran scholars all over the world—dependent on the small coterie who controlled access to the unpublished texts—labored with the published texts to pierce the veil that shrouded the origins, doctrines and identification of the Qumran sectarians.
In the early 1980s, Strugnell began talking about MMT. In 1984 he delivered a scholarly paper on it at a conference of Qumran scholars—without of course releasing the text itself. Only Strugnell and those he showed it to could study the text. Strugnell thus retained strict control over the dissemination of information concerning this crucial text.
One might have thought that after a quarter-century’s failure to alert the scholarly community to this unusually significant text, Strugnell would have promptly transcribed, translated and published these mere 120 lines. Not so. Especially because of its significance, Strugnell wanted to control research on this document for as long as possible.
As a first step, he decided to write a commentary on MMT before scholars in general could get a glimpse of the text itself. To supplement his own expertise, he enlisted an expert Hebrew linguist, Elisha Qimron of Hebrew University, to work with him on the project. The commentary they have written is now nearly 500 pages. Yet the text of MMT itself remains unavailable.
MMT contains approximately 20 Jewish religious laws (halakhot; singular, halakhah). Since neither Strugnell nor Qimron is a halakhic expert, Strugnell asked the help of another Hebrew University professor, Talmud expert Jacob Sussman, to write an excursus on the halakhic aspects of MMT, to be published with the commentary.
Several of the halakhot deal with the special calendar used by the sectarians at Qumran. Again, this is beyond Strugnell’s expertise. So Strugnell negotiated with Hebrew University professor Shemaryahu Talmon, who is an expert on calendars, to write about the calendrical aspects of MMT. To entice Talmon, Strugnell agreed to make available to Talmon all of Strugnell’s unpublished calendrical texts from Qumran—which, like MMT, the scholarly world has yet to see. With such an inducement, Talmon was unable to resist. So the initial publication of MMT will also include Talmon’s study of the calendar at Qumran.
In this way, Strugnell can control not simply the availability of MMT to the scholarly community generally, but also the research concerning it. Once MMT is published and generally available, scores of studies will be written about this text, but until then, Strugnell alone controls research on this important document—more than 35 years after he was assigned to publish it.
At this point, the reader may well ask how we know that MMT is so significant. One source, of course, is Strugnell himself, who often speaks of it at scholarly conferences. Almost tauntingly, he has called it “one of the most important documents from Qumran. … Its contribution to the history of halakhah and of the Hebrew language, and to other fields, cannot be exaggerated.”5 Another source of information concerning its importance is other scholars to whom Strugnell has shown the text. Because Strugnell is not an expert in the treacherous arcane of Jewish religious law, he is reportedly fearful of making a halakhic mistake in his commentary, and so he has shown the text to numerous halakhic experts for consultation. These experts confirm the significance of the unpublished text. One of them, New York University’s Lawrence Schiffman has recently written an extensive article on MMT6—obviously with Strugnell’s permission.7 For a more popular discussion of MMT’s importance, see Schiffman’s forthcoming article in the October 1990 issue of BAR’s sister publication Bible Review (“The Significance of the Scrolls,” BR 06:05).
According to Schiffman, MMT is “very significant.” It is “important” for understanding “the origins of the [Qumran] sect and the early history of the Qumran community.” The laws contained in MMT “may allow us to learn much about the ideology of those who authored the text.” Clearly, MMT will lead to “a reevaluation of some of the older theories regarding the scrolls. … The dominant Essene hypothesis, if it is to be maintained, would require a radical reorientation. … The publication of [MMT] will necessitate the reevaluation of many aspects of Qumran studies.”
Another scholar, Stephen Goranson, tells us that MMT “presents historians with an opportunity to reconsider the origin and interaction of various Jewish sectarian groups [including Pharisees, Sadducees and Essenes].”8
So eager is the scholarly community to see MMT that photocopies of Strugnell’s transcription have been circulating. Strugnell refers to these as “pirated copies.”
For more than a year now, as the publication date approaches, the text has been regularly referred to as the “soon-to-be-published MMT.” Strugnell has left the impression that his work is completed, but it may still be a year or more before it is actually published. In the meantime, Strugnell refuses to release the text. In November 1989, 1 appeared on a panel with Strugnell at Princeton University and publicly asked him if he would give me a copy of MMT. The answer was no. In June 1990, at a press conference in Jerusalem, I again publicly asked Strugnell if he would give me a copy of MMT. The answer was again no.
In the meantime, the world of scholarship waits.—
