Blood on the Floor at New York Dead Sea Scroll Conference

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What conference organizer Norman Golb of the University of Chicago intended as a “healing conference” (his words), in which scholars with widely varying interpretations of the Dead Sea Scrolls would meet in civil discourse, began with what can only be described as an academic brawl. The four-day conference December 14–17, 1992—was held, appropriately enough, in the New York Blood Center: By the first day there was blood on the floor.

In the end, a reconciliation was cobbled together. But the wounds have not yet healed and they will doubtless leave scars, perhaps permanently.

A book entitled The Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered,^a by Dead Sea Scroll maverick Robert Eisenman and a young University of Chicago scholar named Michael Wise, served as the focus, if not the apple, of discord. Published a mere two months before the conference—after the invitations to address the conference had been accepted and the program announced—the book purports to present “the first complete translation and interpretation of 50 key documents withheld for over 35 years.”

Less than a week before the New York conference, a statement was released to the press by 18^b prominent Dead Sea Scroll scholars accusing authors Eisenman (who chairs the religious studies department of California State University at Long Beach) and Wise of “unethical appropriation” of other people’s work, of “manifestly false” assertions, of using unnamed publications in “a fraudulent manner,” of using a “technique … clearly calculated to hide from the reader” previous definitive publications of Dead Sea Scroll texts, of “intentionally hid[ing] from their readers” their use of others people’s work, of “utterly unacceptable” and “offensive” conduct, of being “extremely lax in the documentation of the contributions of others of whose ideas they make use throughout the volume,” of “making use of important discoveries made by reputable [sic!] scholars, presenting them as if they are their own original ideas, with no credit given to those who truly discovered them,” and of “the intentional hiding of the debt which the book owes to previous scholarship.”

The statement singled out for special condemnation the book’s publication of the famous Dead Sea Scroll text known as MMT: “The claim of [Eisenman and Wise] not to have used the previously circulated edition of 4QMMT prepared by J[ohn] Strugnell and E[lisha] Qimron is laughable and manifestly dishonest,” the statement of the 18 scholars said. The statement also called the authors’ claim to have done their own work on MMT “especially ludicrous.” (The full text of the statement appears in “Accusations and Retractions at New York Scroll Conference.”)

Among the signers of the statement were many of the world’s most prominent Dead Sea Scroll scholars, including Harvard’s Frank Moore Cross, Hebrew University’s Jonas Greenfield and Shemaryahu Talmon, the École Biblique’s Emile Puech, Notre Dame’s James VanderKam, Catholic University’s Joseph Fitzmyer, New York University’s Lawrence Schiffman and chief scroll editor Emanuel Tov as well as chief American editor of the Biblical texts, Eugene Ulrich.

Some signers of the statement who were scheduled to deliver papers at the conference decided to boycott it because of the Eisenman-Wise book. Although the conference was sponsored by the New York Academy of Sciences as well as the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, the conference chairs included Michael Wise. Among those who boycotted the conference was Elisha Qimron. “They [Eisenman and Wise] stole my work [MMT],” Qimron told me from Philadelphia after he decided to boycott the conference.

Other scholars, like Yale’s Mark Smith, decided to withdraw a scheduled paper and stay 064home. Smith simply did not want to be involved in all the controversy.

The statement signed by the 18 scholars was released to the press several days before the conference. On December 13, 1992, the Sunday before the conference, both the New York Times and the Associated Press carried major stories. “More name-calling controversy has erupted among scholars of the Dead Sea Scrolls, deepening distrust and threatening to disrupt an international conference scheduled to begin tomorrow at the New York Academy of Sciences,” the New York Times story began.

The story quoted Eisenman and Wise as “deny[ing] the accusations, saying they worked with photographs of the original texts and did not depend on any one else’s work.” Eisenman charged his accusers of “jealousy.”

A hastily arranged symposium was called for Monday afternoon on the ethics of scholarly publication.

At the Monday afternoon session, Norman Golb accused the 18 signers of the statement of “McCarthyism.” The statement, he said, is “remarkable for its invective tone and misstatement of facts … The obvious polemical thrust of this group effort to discredit the book in question raises questions not so much about the book as about the fundamental motive of the writers of the statement … [This] astonishingly deceitful attack on my colleague Dr. Wise [was] produced with the hope and intention that it might destroy the career of an outstanding and brilliant scholar of the Qumran texts.

Professor Wise made his own statement in which he took responsibility for the transcriptions and reconstructions of the texts, noting that Eisenman, who is an historian and not a paleographer, was responsible mainly for the interpretations of the texts. Wise pointedly called the statement of the 18 scholars “libelous.” It has, he said, a “propagandistic intent.” Specifically with regard to MMT, Wise stated, “No one in the field can deny having read the Strugnell-Qimron version. But does that mean that any subsequent edition produced by others is ipso facto stolen?” Wise claimed to have spent hundreds of hours on MMT with his graduate students in a seminar devoted to the project. “To the extent that the two editions resemble each other, that is a function of the evidence itself. It should be appreciated that six copies of the portions in question have survived and that by the standards of the Cave Four materials, three are very well preserved, virtually intact for long stretches … With these copies, an editor is forced by the evidence to follow certain lines.”

A statement by Professor James M. Robinson of the Institute for Antiquity and Christianity and Claremont Graduate School turned the tables on the signers of the statement by charging the members of the official editing team who had long denied access to other scholars with “an ethically repugnant monopoly that finally had to be broken by force.” Robinson went on to say that “there has emerged universal agreement among all (except the cartel itself) that the publication policies of the Dead Sea Scroll editors had, after the lapse of a generation, become unethical. This conclusion is based not only on the practically unanimous acclaim in the press and in the academic community for the steps taken to break the monopoly in 1991.”

By the end of the day, there was a sense among some scholars, including some of the 18 who had signed the statement, that the statement went too far. It left the impression that a coterie of leading Dead Sea Scroll scholars was ganging up on a single untenured assistant professor. Moreover, the statement did not specify the evidence that would justify such extraordinarily strong condemnation. It was hard to believe that each of the 18 signers had studied the evidence of wrongdoing. Did many of the 18 sign simply because a colleague had urged that another signature be added to the imposing list?

The statement had another weakness: It charged that the Eisenman-Wise book “abounds with errors” in “interpreting” the texts. All of the signers of the statement had official scroll assignments, a fact that Golb forcefully pointed out in his presentation on Monday afternoon. The attack on Eisenman and Wise’s “interpretations” made it look like the vitriolic condemnation of their book was based on the official editors’ views as to what constituted a proper interpretation. In his afternoon presentation Golb referred to “the regrettable statement about ‘definitive interpretations’ once used by the Israeli Antiquities Authority to defend the withholding of the texts from scholars [not affiliated with the official team of editors].” Eisenman was more explicit: According to the Times, “Dr. Eisenman suggested that this [statement of the 18] was one more attempt by establishment scholars to control the analysis and publication of the scrolls.”

During the next two and half days, efforts to conciliate the matter occupied a number of participants in the conference as the scholarly papers were being presented in the auditorium. On the closing day of the conference, two statements were read to the assembled scholars, one by Professor Wise and the other, on behalf of the signers of the statement, by Professor VanderKam, who, together with Professor Hartmut Stegemann of Gottingen University, Germany, led the effort to find some formula that would allow the statement of the 18 to be retracted. (Both statements appear in “Accusations and Retractions at New York Scroll Conference.”)

In his statement, Wise conceded that “documentation for certain portions of the book for which I was responsible was incomplete” and that he “did not fully express indebtedness to colleagues whose work I consulted.”

In response VanderKam read a statement that, according to the New York Times, “he said was approved by the 19 [sic] signers of the letter protesting the book.”

VanderKam’s statement said that “in light of Professor Wise’s statement, and after obtaining additional information about the production of the book … those of us who were signatories to the statement of protest hereby retract the statement and all that it implies.”

According to the Times report, “Participants in the dispute and other researchers, stunned by the acrimony of debate earlier in the conference, were relieved by the reconciliation.”

Whether that is the end of the matter is, at this writing, an open question. Emile Puech, although giving his consent to the retraction, reserved the right to send a letter of protest to Wise’s university. Jonas Greenfield claims he was not consulted with respect to the retraction and that he hasn’t retracted it. Elisha Qimron has said that he is consulting his lawyers as to whether he will bring a suit against Eisenman and Wise similar to the suit he has brought against the Biblical Archaeology Society (BAS) for printing his reconstruction of MMT, for which he claims copyright. If it was wrong for BAS to have published the reconstruction of MMT, it is twice wrong for 065Eisenman and Wise to have done so, for they, according to the accusation, have plagiarized. BAS never claimed the work as its own.

Indeed, the statement read by VanderKam on behalf of the 18 scholars appears to exonerate BAS. The retraction specifically states that it is permissible to use the work of others, such as the Strugnell-Qimron reconstruction of MMT, as long as it is properly acknowledged. According to a later story in the New York Times (December 22), Qimron “approved the statement [of retraction], some of his associates said.”

In the course of the reconciliation negotiations a number of charges in the statement of 18 evaporated or appeared to be caviling or of little substance.

For example, the statement said the Eisenman-Wise book “claims to publish fifty previously unpublished texts.” In fact, according to the statement, “About half the texts were previously published.” Therefore the claim is “manifestly false” and presents “serious ethical” problems—and is even “fraudulent.” The use of this cover blurb, they said, is “manifestly a marketing strategy which is blatantly unethical.”

However, the book makes no claim to publishing 50 previously unpublished texts. What the carefully phrased cover blurb, inserted by the publisher rather than the authors, says is “The first complete translation and interpretation of 50 key documents withheld for over 35 years.” Citations in the book make it clear that publications concerning many of these texts have previously appeared.

Another example: Eisenman and Wise cite previous publications as “previous discussions.” This, the statement of the 18 claims, is “clearly calculated to hide from the reader that many of the citations are to full, often definitive publications which the authors used in preparing their publication.

In another case, Eisenman and Wise cited a Jerusalem Post article, the only published account of a text, but failed to mention the people (Ada Yardeni, Hanan Eshel and Esti Eshel) who had done the work.

However, the unacknowledged use of the work of other scholars soon became the heart of the matter in the reconciliation negotiations. In one case, Wise used a handout given at a lecture by University of Haifa scholar Devorah Dimant at a Dead Sea Scroll conference in Madrid in 1991.^c Anticipating that the proceedings of the Madrid conference would be published by the time his book appeared, Wise cited the forthcoming Madrid conference volume and not the handout.

A more serious problem related to MMT. The transcript of the samizdat copy of MMT that virtually all scholars in the field use because, after 40 years, the editors of this important text, Harvard’s John Strugnell and Ben Gurion University’s Elisha Qimron, have not yet given it even a preliminary publication, is based on several mis-joins of fragments that they have since corrected. The transcription of MMT in Eisenman and Wise’s book contains these same mis-joins. This is especially embarrassing because in their introduction to their version of MMT, Eisenmen and Wise state, “Our reconstruction, transliteration and translation here are completely new [emphasis in original]. We have not relied on anyone or any other work, but rather sifted through the entire unpublished corpus, grouping like plates together, identifying all the overlaps, and making all the joins ourselves. As it turns out, this is not very difficult, as these group out fairly readily and are quite easily put together.”

Wise of course conceded that he had read the Strugnell-Qimron version. He was unable to give a satisfactory explanation of his use of the mis-joins. Perhaps they unconsciously entered his head or perhaps they were the result of the work of some of the graduate students in his seminar, which Wise failed to review adequately. It would be foolish, his defenders said, for him to deliberately or intentionally copy the mis-joins; it was obvious that this use of the Strugnell-Qimron version would be easily recognized.

Wise agreed to the reconciliation statement, in effect apologizing (“I am sorry that the documentation for certain portions of the book for which I was responsible was incomplete, and that I did not more fully express indebtedness to colleagues whose work I consulted and whom I admire”). In turn, the accusing scholars agreed to a retraction statement. This statement specifically “reaffirmed the … right … of all scholars … to make properly acknowledged use of the work of others.” It also “retract[ed] the statement [of protest] and all it implies.”

No one was entirely happy with the outcome, but it was better than nothing. As New York University’s Lawrence Schiffman told a New York Times reporter, “We have had a major conflict. These kinds of conflicts are never resolved to everyone’s complete satisfaction.” With this, everyone would agree.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch—or back in the lecture hall—scholars were delivering a variety of papers on various aspects of the scrolls. Even here, however, there was sometimes unusual controversy.

Perhaps the most controversial was a paper read by Pauline Donceel-Voute of the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium. Dr. Donceel-Voute and her husband Robert Donceel are preparing the final report on the excavations of the Qumran settlement adjacent to the caves where the scrolls were found more than 35 years ago. The site was excavated in the 1950s by Père Roland de Vaux of the École Biblique. De Vaux died in 1971 without publishing a final report on his excavation. Several years ago, the École Biblique engaged the Donceels to write a final report based on the materials de Vaux had left behind.

Prior to Dr. Donceel-Voute’s talk at the New York conference, the only statement of their findings that was accessible to scholars was an interview they gave to the public television program “NOVA” for an episode on the scrolls that was broadcast in 1991. Scholars are not accustomed to citing a television program as the source of scholarly information, so Dr. Donceel-Voute’s paper was awaited with special anticipation.

Scholars at the New York conference were shocked to learn that many of the finds from the excavation have simply disappeared. About three-quarters of a particularly important hoard of more than 1,200 coins that Pere de Vaux entrusted to Father A. Spijkerman for publication cannot be found. Father Spijkerman has since died. Adjacent to the settlement at Qumran is a graveyard of over 1,100 graves of which de Vaux excavated 43. None of the bones from these excavations can be found. On the other hand, the Donceels have located a number of finds that they feel confident were excavated at the site, but were never registered.

In an apparent effort to defend de Vaux, Dr. Donceel-Voute claimed that the missing finds were typical of a site excavated at that time. Duke University’s Eric Meyers, a well-known veteran of numerous excavations in Israel and elsewhere, who chaired the session, vociferously disagreed.

This was only the first of many disagreements the assembled scholars found with Dr. Donceel-Voute’s presentation. De Vaux had interpreted the site as a kind of monastery, consistent with his belief that it was a center of celibate Essenes, a fringe Jewish 067sect during the centuries prior to the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. In the “NOVA” television program, the Donceels suggested the site was a villa where wealthy Jerusalemites lived during the winter. In support of this contention, Dr. Donceel-Voute showed slides during her New York talk of delicate glass unguentaria that may once have contained perfumes, elegant stone urns with fluted bodies, impressive column bases and sherds of fine thin painted pottery. All of this, she maintained, was inconsistent with “monastic simplicity.”

The famous scriptorium at the site, which de Vaux believed was where the scrolls were written by the monks who worked at Qumran, was reinterpreted by Dr. Donceel-Voute as a Roman-style dining room known as a triclinium. What were once thought to be the seats on which the scribes who wrote scrolls sat were reinterpreted as benches that lined three sides of the room on which the diners reclined as they ate, resting, as we know from numerous pictorial representations, on their left elbows.

The University of Chicago’s Norman Golb, who contends that the site is a military fortress, rather than a villa or, the reigning hypothesis, a monastic community, found Dr. Donceel-Voute’s presentation “a breath of fresh wind.” But, noted the New York Times, other scholars “subjected her to tough questioning in accusatory tones.” Dr. Donceel-Voute responded, “I am upset by the atmosphere of aggression.”

De Vaux based his contention that the particular room was the scriptorium in part on three and perhaps more inkwells found there. Dr. Donceel-Voute contended, however, that these are commonly found at such sites and prove little. Other scholars disagreed, maintaining that inkwells are relatively rare finds. Several scholars also questioned whether such a narrow room could serve as a triclinium. Most other excavated triclinia are much wider.

Another obstacle to the villa—or the military fortress—interpretation of the site is its location. Today the site sits beside an excellent road that runs along the western shore of the Dead Sea. But 2,000 years ago, this road did not exist. Just south of Qumran the limestone cliffs jutted into the sea, so that an ancient traveler going north would have had to climb the cliffs south of Qumran and pass around this site. While the site could be approached from the north, the ancient traveler could not easily continue south. This resulted in a very isolated site, not very suitable either for a military fortress or a winter villa.

But the greatest difficulty in interpreting he site as a villa is the mass of pottery found at the site and brilliantly analyzed in presentation at the New York conference by Tufts University archaeologist Jodi Magness. She commented, however, that she was dependent on de Vaux’s preliminary reports and might have to modify her findings when all the material from the site becomes available. Magness noted the apparent absence from the site of any significant amount of imported wares. This is in sharp contrast to other sites. Apparently no imported western terra sigilata ware or mold lamps were found at Qumran. Even eastern terra sigilata ware, another fine ware, is rare at Qumran. The pottery forms show that the inhabitants of the site were familiar with current ceramic trends, but for the most part made their own somewhat degraded versions of these forms. At Qumran we find locally made examples of pottery shapes well known from other sites. Moreover, the forms at Qumran are limited and repetitious. Fine wares are almost totally absent; the bulk of the pottery is coarse ware.

All this, Dr. Magness said, is “suggestive of a deliberate policy of isolation.” The small amount of beautifully thin, painted Nabatean ware found at the site indicates that the inhabitants of Qumran had access to the outside world, but intentionally refrained from taking part in it. The common, coarse unpainted pottery found in such abundance at the site reflects an air of austerity far different from that found at other sites.

Professor Schiffman noted a certain consistency between the pottery and the texts from the caves: The austerity in the pottery is paralleled in the linguistic and literary austerity of the texts.

As for the material remains that Dr. Donceel-Voute found inconsistent with “monastic simplicity,” Professor VanderKam noted that “monastic” did not necessarily imply “simplicity,” as reflected in monasteries even today.

Another interesting aspect of Dr. Magness’ presentation was her analysis of the jars in which some of the scrolls were found. Locally made, they were apparently designed specifically for the purpose of storing valuable scrolls.

Politics was unfortunately not far below the surface of Dr. Donceel-Voute’s views. A prominent Israeli archaeologist, who is not involved in Qumran research, asked Dr. Donceel-Voute if some of the problems of the site could be clarified by reexcavation. Dr. Donceel-Voute did not think so. Surprised, the Israeli archaeologist then inquired whether it would be worthwhile excavating more of the tombs. Among the graves de Vaux excavated were some women—a problem for the celibacy theory—and even some children. Moreover, as noted above, none of the bones from the excavated graves can be located. Dr. Donceel-Voute recognized that much could be learned from excavating some additional 068graves, but added that she was “vehemently opposed to this because the site was under Franco-Jordanian permit.” That quickly ended the conversation.

It is clear that the archaeology of Qumran presents a major problem that will be the focus of considerable attention in the next few years. How much longer the scholarly world can wait for the release of the material from Qumran is difficult to say, especially because so many sites remain unpublished for far longer than the Donceels have been at work at Qumran. Yet in many ways Qumran is a special case. The matter deserves the attention of the Israel Antiquities Authority, which can be both supportive and encouraging.

Joseph Patrich, of the University of Haifa, powerfully rejected the suggestion—initially made by de Vaux—that the monks who worked at Qumran lived in nearby caves. Patrich, who has surveyed, excavated and explored hundreds of caves in the Judean desert, found none of the telltale signs of regular sustained human habitation in the caves in the Qumran area. These caves showed no terraces or built entryways. Most tellingly, Patrich found no evidence of well-worn paths that would have survived—and have survived in the Byzantine monasteries of the Judean desert he has studied—if the monks of Qumran had retired to the caves each night. Dr. Patrich believes that the people who worked at Qumran also lived there. Perhaps one cave was used for expelled members. A highly placed functionary may have inhabited the famous Cave 4, where over 500 scrolls were stored on shelves, but few if any of the other caves were found to have been inhabited.

Patrich also rejected Professor Golb’s contention that the site was a military fortress. That there was a battle here when the Romans destroyed the site in 68 A.D. does not mean that the inhabitants were a military contingent. Moreover, the idea that the Romans would have permitted a Jewish fort with a military garrison to exist here for 200 years is unthinkable. This area was, after all, a Roman province at the time.

A number of other talks contained fascinating insights. Some of the mysteries of the Copper Scroll may be clarified and new ones introduced. The room that housed the library in the Qumran settlement may have been located and the key to entry discovered. Messianism at Qumran may now be clarified with the accessibility of new texts. These talks and others will be articles in later issues of this magazine. Keep tuned. Dead Sea Scroll research promises to be endlessly fascinating.

The papers from the conference will be published later this year by the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 2 East 63rd St., New York, NY 10021.

What conference organizer Norman Golb of the University of Chicago intended as a “healing conference” (his words), in which scholars with widely varying interpretations of the Dead Sea Scrolls would meet in civil discourse, began with what can only be described as an academic brawl. The four-day conference December 14–17, 1992—was held, appropriately enough, in the New York Blood Center: By the first day there was blood on the floor. In the end, a reconciliation was cobbled together. But the wounds have not yet healed and they will doubtless leave scars, perhaps permanently. A book entitled The Dead Sea […]