1997 marked (almost certainly) the fiftieth anniversary of the discovery of the first Dead Sea Scrolls, and so, once again, the significance of these ancient documents is a matter of great public interest. A recent (May 1998) international conference held at New College, Edinburgh, indicates that academic interest is as strong in Scotland as in the rest of the world.

However, it is not only specialists who are interested in the Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS). There is widespread public interest in the subject also, and this, in certain respects, is something to be warmly welcomed. This is true simply because of the value of the DSS to archaeology; they have been described as 'the greatest MS [manuscript] discovery of modern times' (W.F. Albright, on seeing the photographs of the first scrolls to be discovered. See J.C. VanderKam The Dead Sea Scrolls Today, p5). It is always valuable to be aware of developments in our knowledge of the ancient world. However, the fact that during the 1990s the DSS have been at the centre of some of the most startling, dramatic, and controversial events imaginable, leading to massive publicity in both the academic and popular press, has surely added to the public interest in these documents.

The phenomenal interest in the Scrolls is also demonstrated in the recent exhibition in Glasgow. Thousands flocked from all over the country (Glasgow was the only British venue for the exhibition) to see the tiny fragments of ancient leather parchment, and to hear experts lecture on their significance.

Given the interest in these ancient documents, it is worth our while taking some time to learn a little more about them. But when authors make claims about the Christian faith on the basis of the supposed contents of these documents, it is important that we are able to tell fact from fantasy so that we neither lose our confidence in the certainty of our salvation nor reject the valuable insights which these amazing discoveries have brought to light.

The Story so Far

The story of the accidental discovery of the DSS has been retold in almost every introductory volume published in those fifty years (of which there are many). Some readers may not have had the opportunity to read these yet, so the facts are worth rehearsing.

The first scrolls were discovered in 1947 by a Bedouin shepherd boy who, according to the most familiar account, tossed a stone into a dark cave in the Judean wilderness as he searched for a lost goat and was surprised to hear the sound of pottery breaking. When he entered the cave he found several clay jars which contained leather scrolls. The region in which the cave is situated bears the Arabic name, Khirbet Qumran.

It appears that the Bedouin were not particularly impressed with the new discoveries. Edward Cook, in Solving the Mysteries, cites the recollections of the shepherd boy: "We kept them lying around the tent, and the children played with them. One of them broke in pieces and we threw the pieces on the garbage pile. Later we came back and found that the wind had blown all the pieces away".

When one considers the vast amount that has been written about even the smallest sections of text from the scrolls, it is fascinating to imagine how much material became play material for the Bedouin children. However, the Bedouin knew that Western scholars were often willing to pay substantial amounts of money for ancient documents so they took the scrolls to a dealer in Bethlehem known as Kando (his real name was Khalil Iskander Shahin). Since he suspected that the strange writing on the scrolls might be Syriac, he and a friend took them to the Archbishop of the Syrian Orthodox Church in Jerusalem, Mar Samuel in April 1947.

Mar Samuel recognised the writing as Hebrew and asked to buy the scrolls. Unfortunately when the Bedouin and the dealers returned, the gatekeeper of the monastery turned them away. Mar Samuel eventually realised the mistake and persuaded some of the Bedouin to sell him their scrolls. However, others had been so aggrieved that they went elsewhere, and a batch of three scrolls came to an antiquities dealer called Salahi who contacted the professor of archaeology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, E.L. Sukenik. Sukenik's training and experience were ideal for making sense of this ancient writing.

The remaining four scrolls were still in the hands of Mar Samuel who was by now finding that these ancient documents were not so easy to sell. This led him to the most startling method of selling ancient documents: he placed an advertisement in the Wall Street Journal of June 1, 1954. It read: "The Four Dead Sea Scrolls Biblical Manuscripts dating back to at least 200 BC are for sale. This would be an ideal gift to an educational or religious institution by an individual or a group". The advertisement was placed in the category of "Miscellaneous for Sale"! As strange a course of action as this sounds, it was effective because Professor Sukenik's son, Yigael Yadin, a military officer who was in the United States at the time, arranged to purchase the scrolls for a sume of $250,000. They were then presented to the State of Israel and, together with the three already held by Sukenik, they are now housed in the 'Shrine of the Book' in the Israel Museum.

Over the decade following the first discoveries of 1947, a total of eleven caves were found, including cave 4, which contained a vast number of fragments but mostly in very poor condition. It was generally agreed that this represented the library of a monastery inhabited by the most sectarian members of a Jewish group known as the Essenes.

Some of the documents found at Qumran were written by members of the Essene sect. Others were probably brought to the site from elsewhere. Different views have been proposed on these issues.

Clearly a vast amount of time was required to be spent on these texts by experts in Hebrew and Aramaic. The task demanded the formation of a team of specialists, and such a team was duly assembled. However, the composition of that team was to prove the beginning of the rumours of conspiracy.

Before we come to these matters, however, we will consider some of the documents themselves.

Some Significant Documents

Numerous documents and fragments of documents have been found since the first discoveries in 1947, so that a collection of more than 6,000 photographs of scrolls or fragments of scrolls has recently been published. The word 'fragments' is important, however, since many of them are very tiny with only a few characters on each. The number of documents which are either substantially intact, or significant, is much smaller. A very good survey of these is found in James VanderKam's book The Dead Sea Scrolls Today (1994).

Before we get into the details of the individual scrolls, a word about the way in which the scrolls are normally identified. Each scroll or fragment is normally identified by means of a standard formula. It is very common to find reference to the scrolls in modern books about the Bible and so it is useful to know what the formula signifies. The formula begins with a number to identify the cave in which the document was found, followed by a capital Q to indicate that it was found at Qumran. Then follows the specific identification of the individual document, by means of either a number, an abbreviation, a group of letters, or a combination of these.

For example, the interpretation of the Old Testament book Habakkuk was found in cave 1 (the first cave to be discovered), so the formula begins 1Q. Next we discover that it is a 'pesher' , or interpretation, which is identified by means of a lower case p, and that it relates to Habakkuk, which is abbreviated to Hab. Thus the formula reads 1QpHab, and actually tells us quite a bit about the origin and content of the scroll.

I will now identify a few of the most interesting scrolls or fragments. Some of these are very large but it should be said that some of the most interesting and controversial texts from Qumran are very small in physical size.

The Damascus Document

This is abbreviated as CD (for Cairo Damascus). This document was actually found in a synagogue in Cairo in 1896, but was one of the legal texts of the Qumran community.

The Manual of Discipline

Edward Cook tells us of the interesting background to the name of this scroll: "[Miller] Burrows gave the name Manual of Discipline to the scroll... because it reminded him vaguely of the Methodist Manual of Discipline which he had in fact never read". This scroll has been described as the equivalent of the constitution of the community and contains various rules and regulations relating to the ongoing life of the community.

The Habbakuk Commentary

This is a commentary on the first two chapters of our canonical Old Testament book. Clearly the third chapter did not serve the purposes of the author.

The method of interpretation known as pesher attempts to show how the events in the life of the Qumran community are found in the pages of Scripture. This document gives us a fascinating insight into how the community read the Hebrew Bible, and it also contains a famous description of the conflict between the Teacher of Righteousness (the founder of the Qumran sect) and the Wicked Priest (possibly the High Priest in Jerusalem at this time, though we cannot be sure).

The War Scroll

This document tells of a forty-year war between the 'sons of darkness' and the 'sons of light'. It is clear that this is no ordinary battle, but it is a final war. Members of the Qumran community will fight alongside angels and will at last know the blessing of God.

Some of the Works of the Torah

Also known as 4QMMT (the letters represent the Hebrew words for the title), this letter is believed to have been written from the Qumran community (perhaps by their leader, the Teacher of Righteousness, to their priestly counterparts in Jerusalem.

The Copper Scroll

This is one of the most startling finds among the Qumran scrolls. It is exactly as it sounds: a document 'written' (or hammered) onto a sheet of copper which was then wound as a normal scroll. When it was found in Cave 3, however, it was impossible to open due to corrosion. It had to be taken to Manchester University where it was cut into thin vertical strips. It does not make for scintillating reading! However, its contents have got at least a few people excited, as we shall see.

We could also have mentioned the longest scroll, the Temple Scroll, and the various hymns which indicate the piety of the community, but these will be left for the reader's personal investigation!

Everybody is attracted to an exciting story, not least those working in the media, and this is as true when it comes to the Dead Sea Scrolls as in any other field of interest. Indeed the Dead Sea Scrolls provide unusually rich ingredients for a drama: accidental discovery, political tensions, secret codes, hidden treasure, and more. What more could a journalist ask for? Well, perhaps a religious scandal! The Scandinavian scholar Krister Stendahl writes: "It is as a potential threat to Christianity, its claims and its doctrines that the scrolls have caught the imagination of laymen and clergy."

The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception

Three books in particular have made the headlines in the last few years. Each is distinctive, but all unite in the claim that a complete re-evaluation of historic Christianity is required. These books have sold in vast numbers.

The first book has the most dramatic title of the three: The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception. This book, written by two journalists, Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, made a big impact internationally. The German scholars Otto Betz and Rainer Riesner write that in Germany it "appeared in September 1991 with a major advertising campaign, and within a month had begun to top the non-fiction best-seller lists, where it stayed for a year, to date [1994] more than 400,000 copies have been sold in Germany alone".

James VanderKam commends the authors for 'a rather good start' to their book but states that it 'quickly degenerates into a disgraceful display of yellow journalism'. They attempt to convince their readers of a Vatican-organised conspiracy, and it has to be said that the policy of the publication team did not help to build widespread confidence in their work. In 1977, the renowned DSS scholar, Geza Vermes, was warning that the lack of publication of scrolls 30 years after the first discoveries was threatening to become 'the academic scandal par excellence of the twentieth century'. However, the scandal clearly had nothing to do with a Vatican conspiracy to hide devastating new revelations about the origins of Christianity. The team working on the scrolls included Protestants and Catholics, and even an agnostic, Allegro. Despite the wild claims of Baigent and Leigh, their work was part of a movement which convinced the scholars in charge of the scrolls that they could not keep them to themselves any longer, so in 1993 a microfiche was published containing around 6,000 official photographs of documents from Qumran and the surrounding region. For Baigent and Leigh, however, this was perhaps less than great news, for, as VanderKam comments, recent access to the scrolls has revealed nothing damaging to Christianity and shows their conspiracy theory to be baseless.

Jesus the Man

The second book came from an Australiam called Barbara Thiering, entitled Jesus the Man: A New Interpretation from the Dead Sea Scrolls. Thiering believes that early Christianity developed out of the Qumran community. She identifies the Teacher of Righteousness with John the Baptist and the Wicked Priest (or the Man of the Lie) with Jesus. These two figures led two factions of the community. The faction led by Jesus/the Wicked Priest produced the Gospels

and Acts, which, Thiering claims, must be regarded as encoded documents and must be interpreted in the manner of 'pesher' interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures.

Tom Wright identifies two major flaws in this theory. First, the scrolls simply were not written when Thiering suggests they were; they belong to a time before Jesus and the Christian church were on the scene of Palestine. Secondly, the pesher method which she places at the centre of her argument was never used as a method for encoding the life of a community in a document which someone else must decode. Rather, it was a way of seeing the present life of the community in the pages of scripture.

The Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered

The third controversial book is The Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered by Robert Eisenman and Michael Wise. This book was written by one of the most maverick of modern scholars, but co-written by an evangelical scholar, Wise. Wise later apologised to fellow experts for his involvment in this project. However, his part in the work was to provide texts and translations of some previously unpublished documents. The book is valuable for the access it gives to these.

However, Eisenman provided the commentary, and it has no credibility whatsoever. He believes that the Teacher of Righteousness is James, Jesus' brother, and this underlies his commentary at many points. This view suffers from much the same weakness as Thiering's: the dating of the scrolls makes this view impossible, and the anonymity of the Teacher of Righteousness leaves Eisenman's view unverifiable.

It is encouraging to see a growing number of evangelicals involved in the process of scroll translation and the communication of its results. However, it remains a fact that while some rather maverick volumes fly immediately to the top of the best-seller charts, the most sane and reliable volumes seldom gain the same publicity and shelf-space. But then sanity and reliability never did make fortunes.

Conclusion

As Christians who trust the Bible to tell us the truth, both about God's plan for his people, and about how he worked that plan out among the first Christians, we have nothing to fear from the Dead Sea Scrolls. This is not because we reject the false teaching of the scrolls regarding Christian belief, but precisely because the scrolls say nothing about Christian belief.

 

Rev Alistair I Wilson is Principal of Dumisani Theological College in South Africa.

 

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