Dead Sea Scrolls UPDATE

[merkavah12]

news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/07/100727-who-wrote-dead-sea-scrolls-bible-science-tv/

The recent decoding of a cryptic cup, the excavation of ancient Jerusalem tunnels, and other archaeological detective work may help solve one of the great biblical mysteries: Who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls?

The new clues hint that the scrolls, which include some of the oldest known biblical documents, may have been the textual treasures of several groups, hidden away during wartime—and may even be "the great treasure from the Jerusalem Temple," which held the Ark of the Covenant, according to the Bible.

So yeah, the big find is that multiple sects may have written the scrolls and hidden them in the caves for safe-keeping during a time of war.

Thoughts?

[unkleE]

It sounds like this is another fairly unsupported theory. It may yet prove to be correct, but on the evidence of that article, it seems to be mostly speculation at present. But that isn't necessarily a criticism - all good theories have to start with speculative hypotheses, as do all rejected hypotheses!

[noons]

If all they're trying to say is that the Dead Sea Scrolls were written by different people, that's not much of a conclusion considering they were written over a period of more than a thousand years.

[timoneill]

Jul 31, 2010 3:18:14 GMT noons said:

If all they're trying to say is that the Dead Sea Scrolls were written by different people, that's not much of a conclusion considering they were written over a period of more than a thousand years.

The idea is not that they were written by different people, but that they are works representing a number of different sects and groups. This contradicts the consensus position that they are all the work of one sect – an Essene community based at Kirbet Qumran.

It’s not entirely new - it’s been the position of Norman Golb for several decades and supported and popularised by John Romer. But it seems to have been gaining some traction in recent years. Golb has pointed out some major archaeological problems with the idea that the ruins at Kirbet Qumran represented a sectarian community and argued that it remained what it had originally been – a fortified outpost.

The idea is that this fort was re-occupied during the Jewish War and that Temple priests fled there in the lead up to the siege of Jerusalem in AD 70, smuggling scrolls from the Temple collection with them along with other treasures. This explains the mysterious “Copper Scroll”, which seems to list the locations of caches of treasure and books – something which the mainstream view has had difficulty reconciling with the standard theory of ascetics living a simple life in the desert. Golb argues that this document lists the locations of other scroll caches and parts of the Temple treasury. It certainly reads like one and that could also explain why it was inscribed on metal – that’s not a document you’d want to rot or be eaten by worms.

In the article above Lawrence Schiffman says all this is “very, very unlikely” largely on the grounds that the Scrolls material seems to have a high level of coherence. But as the article notes, others don’t see this coherence at all and point to differences in the sectarian material that indicate they are not the products of one community but of several sects. Some interpretations of the archaeology don’t fit the standard theory either: such as the bones of women and infant children in the cemetary at Qumran, which doesn’t really fit with a community of celibate ascetics.

Critics of the single Essene origin theory note that this idea was attractive to Jewish scholars because it put the Scrolls material off to one side of Jewish tradition. By shunting it off to the Essenes any variant texts or odd practices could be dismissed as the quirks of a long dead sect. The idea that the Scrolls are actually more reflections of mainstream Jewish thought in the Second Temple Period opens up some cans of historical worms for modern Jews who see themselves as direct heirs of that tradition.

I should hasten to point out that this area is not my area of specialty and I’m simply reporting my understanding of the issue. I must say I find aspects of Golb’s thesis fairly compelling, but I also know it has some problems. It’s also been rejected by the majority of scholars, but new evidence keeps popping up to give it a new lease of life. I’m not familiar enough with the scholarship to know if this is because it really is a viable idea or if all I’m detecting is the “amazing new finds overturn orthodoxy” effect that we often see in popular reporting of fringe theories.

I don’t think the non-Essene idea is quite up with the Jesus Myth/Holy Blood Holy Grail/Magdalene nonsense that the press occasionally serves up as “radical new findings etc etc” but it’s hard to really tell.