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From C-csm@clari.net (CSM / Ilene R. Prusher):
Subject: Detective Story: Who Wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls?
All Follow-Up: Re: Detective Story: Who Wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls?
Date: Tue, 24 Feb 1998 13:55:27 PST
Scholar's controversial new claims trigger a big debate over
fundamental aspects of Judeo-Christian history.
Archaeologists dig to shed new light on the past. But Yitzhar
Hirschfeld's latest excavation casts an essential page of the
Judeo-Christian past in a different light altogether, leaving critics
crying sensationalism - or overenthusiasm.
At stake are the 2,000-year-old Dead Sea Scrolls, specifically, who
wrote them and where. It's long been presumed that the Essenes, a
monastic sect of Jews, wrote the texts at Qumran, a settlement on the
northern end of the Dead Sea. The scrolls were hidden in a cave there
until some 50 years ago, when a Bedouin shepherd stumbled upon them.
Their reclamation has become a critical source of knowledge of Jewish
and early Christian thinking.
But Hebrew University's Professor Hirschfeld says the scrolls
weren't actually written at Qumran by the breakaway Essenes, but in
Jerusalem by mainstream Jews, and then spirited to the Dead Sea for
safekeeping from Romans. The ruins at Qumran, he suggests, were not
home to the Essenes at all. He says the remains of a village he has
just discovered in the cliffs above Ein Gedi show the Essenes lived
here - and not at Qumran.
If his theory proves correct, it could reduce the scrolls' links to
understanding early Christianity. Since the Essenes led monastic
lives, practicing celibacy and vegetarianism uncommon among other
Jewish sects, their beliefs have been thought to have had a strong
influence on Christian monks who lived in the desert in the first
several centuries AD. Experts note similarities between the scrolls
and the Gospels; John the Baptist is believed to have been an Essene.
``Qumran doesn't fit the character of the Essenes - it seems like a
fortified manor house,'' says Hirschfeld, adding that the well-heeled
facilities there don't fit the poverty and asceticism of the Essenes.
``The connection between the scrolls and Qumran was manufactured by
a French excavator ... [who] did a good job of building the myth of
Qumran,'' he says.
What's meant by 'below'?
Hirschfeld's theory stems from his conclusion that scholars have
lost something in translation when reading historical sources. Roman
writers Josephus Flavius and Pliny the Elder mention Essene
communities in their writings, and Pliny specifically describes the
Essenes as living with the town of Ein Gedi ``below them.''
Archaeologists and historians have assumed the Pliny's Latin term
``infra hos'' meant that Ein Gedi was south of the Essenes, thus
placing them to the north at Qumran. But Hirschfeld says that Pliny
meant that Ein Gedi was topographically below them - placing the
Essenes in the steep, rocky hills above sea, where the new ruins have
been uncovered.
Beneath the brush that sprouts among the rocks, marking natural
springs, Hirschfeld found some 25 buildings that he says more
accurately match descriptions of Essene life. Tiny rooms each large
enough to house one man point to a spartan existence. What seems to be
a mikvah, or ritual bath, supports his theory that it was inhabited by
religious Jews.
Also, the dig turned up no evidence of animal bones. That, says Kim
Bowes, a PhD candidate in archaeology at Princeton University who
participated in the dig, is unusual - and concurs with the Essenes'
vegetarianism.
``There are no Greek statues, no mosaic floors. We have absolute
evidence of a communal, ascetic lifestyle here,'' says Ms. Bowes.
``Qumran is a very wealthy community ... this [village] fits the texts
better.'' But altering the accepted views of Qumran, she adds, will be
an uphill battle for Hirschfeld. ``People have built their careers on
Qumran,'' she says.
Indeed, Hirschfeld faces doubts and some outright rejection. The
most common contention is that the village he is excavating was just a
seasonal farming community - thus explaining the simple cells for
temporary living.
``I'm not convinced that there is anything there to connect the
site with the Essenes,'' says Gabriel Barkai, a Jerusalem
archaeologist who toured the excavation. ``Nothing of their way of
life is reflected in the site. It clearly dates to Second Temple
period,'' from 19 BC to AD 70, ``but those rooms could be any type of
storage bins or any other type of installation.''
Dr. Barkai also dismissed Hirschfeld's take on Pliny's compass.
``The interpretation of 'below' is very problematic,'' Barkai says.
``The general view agreed upon by most scholars is still valid, and
nothing in the finds could jeopardize that.''
Next year, when the dig is set to resume, Hirschfeld hopes to turn
up evidence to prove he's right. A piece of written text or engraving
might help. Oil lamps would support the description of a sect absorbed
in study.
Hirschfeld, for his part, is more interested in honing his
expertise in monastic dwellings than in debunking the Dead Sea
Scrolls. But he explains why his theory could resonate in circles that
have studied parallel themes in the scrolls and the Christian gospels.
``If the scrolls are from a site like Qumran, then the scrolls are
part of Christianity. If Qumran was a secular site and the scrolls
came from Jewish Jerusalem, it's a completely different story,''
Hirschfeld says.
Theologians stand firm
So far, theologians seem unmoved, reluctant to accept what they
call too-hasty revisions about where the Essenes lived and whether
they wrote the scrolls.
``I disagree completely,'' says Jerome Murphy-O'Connor, a Roman
Catholic priest and New Testament professor at Jerusalem's Ecole
Biblique et Archeologique Francaise.
``Nothing that Hirschfeld found really fits with the scrolls. They
speak of bigger numbers [of Essenes] and he's found 15 or 16 holes in
the ground,'' says the Fr. Murphy-O'Connor. ``But it's a very
interesting discovery. In the past Qumran was the only candidate for
the Essenes, and now that there is something above Ein Gedi, we should
look at that seriously and it should be integrated into the debate.''
But at the Shrine of the Book, the center where Israel preserves
and studies the Dead Sea Scrolls, Hirschfeld's dig has been deemed
unworthy of discussion.
``We have 800 scrolls, and a sizable amount of them are exactly
what we would expect of Essene writing,'' says Curator Emeritus Magen
Broshi. The village Hirschfeld excavated, he says, was lived in 100
years after the Essenes disappeared. ``This is pure baloney ...
produced by a sensation seeker.''
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