Inside BAR

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The Temple Scroll, the longest of the Dead Sea Scrolls, is the focus of a special triptych of articles in this issue. These articles present three different aspects of the scroll’s history and meaning. First, in “Intrigue and the Scroll—Behind the Scenes of Israel’s Acquisition of the Temple Scroll,” BAR editor Hershel Shanks reveals for the first time the secret story of how the scroll came to light and spurred delicate, but ultimately futile, negotiations for its acquisition. Shanks also reveals the identity of the mysterious “Mr. Z,” the American intermediary in the Temple Scroll negotiations. It’s a story of illegal antiquities-dealing, strange characters and greed, all told from the viewpoint of “Mr. Z.”

Next, Hartmut Stegemann, an authority on the Dead Sea Scrolls, asks “Is the Temple Scroll a Sixth Book of the Torah—Lost for 2,500 Years?” After rejecting Temple Scroll scholar Yigael Yadin’s conclusion that the scroll was a central Torah of the Essene community, Stegemann suggests that it was actually a collection of portions of various Torah scrolls and additional literary sources that had been excluded when Ezra canonized the Pentateuch in 458 B.C. The Temple Scroll, Stegemann believes, was originally intended to be a supplementary sixth book of the Torah, on a par with the other five books of the Pentateuch.

Professor of New Testament science at the University of Goettingen, West Germany, Stegemann is preparing a dictionary of the non-Biblical texts found at Qumran. Since 1973 he has directed the Qumran Research Center Goettingen.

“The Gigantic Dimensions of the Visionary Temple in the Temple Scroll,” by Magen Broshi, completes the triptych with an exercise in historical reconstruction. The Temple Scroll received its name because almost half the scroll concerns the design and ordinances of the temple. But the Temple Scroll temple never existed except in the imagination of the scroll’s author or authors. Through a close reading of the scroll’s text, however, and with the help of an architectural artist’s rendering of the description, we are now granted a look at this grandiose, and unrealistic, dream.

Since 1965 Broshi has served as curator of the Shrine of the Book—the Israel Museum’s special museum housing the Dead Sea Scrolls. He directed the Mt. Zion excavation in Jerusalem from 1971 to 1978 and the excavation at Tel Megadim, a Phoenician city on the Mediterranean coast, south of Haifa, from 1967 to 1969.

When Israeli archaeologist Ze’ev Yeivin began excavations in the sleepy village of es-Samoa (Biblical Eshtemoa), south of Jerusalem, he hoped to unearth clues to the history of a town that has been inhabited continuously since Biblical times. He did not go looking for buried treasure. But he found it—the largest silver hoard ever discovered in Israel. In “The Mysterious Silver Hoard From Eshtemoa,” Yeivin ponders the origin of this 62-pound cache; could it be the booty King David recovered from the Amalekites (1 Samuel 30:26–28, 30)?

Yeivin is the author of the cover story “Ancient Chorazin Comes Back to Life,” BAR 13:05. In addition to excavating Eshtemoa and Chorazin, Yeivin has dug at Tel Erani, Hagosherim, Tirat Yehuda and Carmel. He is the deputy director of Israel’s Department of Antiquities.

Baruch Halpern stirs the cauldron of controversy in “Radical Exodus Redating Fatally Flawed.” His critical analysis of John Bimson and David Livingston’s article, “Redating the Exodus,” BAR 13:05, assails their proposal to move the date of the Exodus from the 13th–12th centuries B.C. to the latter half of the 15th century and also disputes their redating of the end of the Middle Bronze Age. Bimson and Livingston’s theory, Halpern charges, wreaks chronological chaos as it reduces the Late Bronze I period to a mere 20 years.

Associate professor of humanities at York University in Toronto, Canada, Halpern has dug at Khirbet Shema in Israel and has served as an area supervisor at Tell Ashkelon in Israel.

Why depend on translators to tell you what the Bible says? Find out for yourself by learning to read the Bible in its original languages, Hebrew and Greek. That may sound intimidating, but William S. La Sor will remove apprehensions and help you get started in “Learning Biblical Languages,” a survey of 13 recently published, self-teaching primers for Hebrew and Greek. La Sor has excavated at Qumran, at Chorazin and at Jerusalem’s Temple Mount. He is the author of an article on Jewish ritual immersion baths, “What Jewish Miqva’ot Can Tell Us About Christian Baptism,” BAR 13:01.

In “Ancient Records and the Exodus Plagues,” Robert R. Stieglitz demonstrates that the ancients were not ignorant of the nature of communicable disease. Associate professor of Hebraic studies at Rutgers University, Stieglitz is a former curator of the National Maritime Museum in Haifa, Israel. He has excavated in the United States, Greece and Israel, and currently co-directs the Caesarea Maritima excavations on Israel’s Mediterranean coast.

The Temple Scroll, the longest of the Dead Sea Scrolls, is the focus of a special triptych of articles in this issue. These articles present three different aspects of the scroll’s history and meaning. First, in “Intrigue and the Scroll—Behind the Scenes of Israel’s Acquisition of the Temple Scroll,” BAR editor Hershel Shanks reveals for the first time the secret story of how the scroll came to light and spurred delicate, but ultimately futile, negotiations for its acquisition. Shanks also reveals the identity of the mysterious “Mr. Z,” the American intermediary in the Temple Scroll negotiations. It’s a story […]