DISCOVERIES

Winter 1947 – Turmoil in Israel/Jordan… now Israel

3 bedouin - lost goats - Jama Muhammad Khalil - threw rock, crack

Next day, Muhammad ed-Dhib squeezed in, found 10 jars - 8 empty, 1 dirt

Scrolls: Isaiah, Manual of Discipline, commentary on Habakkuk

4 other scrolls found in same cave

Took them to Kando, antiquities dealer - met with Metropolitan Samuel - $100/4

Eleazar Sukenik bought 3 others

Millar Burrows - Manual of Discipline - reminded him of a Methodist Discipline!

Metropolitan put ad in NYTimes, 1954: 4 DEAD SEA SCROLLS, dating to 200 BC

for sale/ideal gift to educational or religious institution/Box F206 - Yadin/$250,000

Shrine of the Book

EXCAVATIONS OF CAVES

Difficult - British mandate, then in Jordan

70 more manuscripts

Ruins just to the south - thought a Roman fort -

1952 - other caves - Simon bar Kokhba

Gap, then bedouin found 11th cave - richest find -

Total - 931 texts!

DATING THE SCROLLS

contents, paleography (complex!), pottery, coins - 250 BC to 120 AD

Reading challenges – fragments, connections, legibility

QUMRAN

Scriptorium, inkwells - 1100 tombs, skeletons

Norman Golb - no connection

Essenes: strict, celibate?, deterministic, ..., communal life

150-300 lived at Qumran - 4000 Essenes in Judea

Penitential movement, Teacher of Righteousness its leader

Wicked Priest his opponent (Jonathan or Simon Maccabee)

Messiahs

CONTENTS

Biblical scrolls - Deut, Isa, Pss - lots - Scriptural study important - Ps 1 (day & night)

11QPs - 41 Pss, diff. Order, 9 extras - dated 30-50 AD

(Slide of scroll, col. 19 tr. By Sanders/color, Hallelujah of David/Smaller was I/bw,

2nd bw/Sanders/117)

Missing verse in Psalm 145 – nun/acrostic!

“Blessed be the Lord forever; God is faithful in his words, gracious in his deeds”

Targums - Job, Leviticus

Tefillin, Mezuzot

Apocrypha: Tobit, Sirach - Yadin text - 40:11ff (slide, read)

SLIDES HERE?
Pseudepigrapha: Enoch, Jubilees, T12P

Commentaries on Bible -- Habakkuk - Chaldeans read as Romans (last days)

Eschatological works - War Scroll (sons of lt vs sons of darkness)

Legal texts - Damascus document (found 1st in 1896), Manual of Discipline

Temple Scroll (blueprint for rebuilding once right people in control)

Calendars

Viewed by them as Scripture? Rule of Community, War Scroll? I Enoch, Jubilees?

PUBLICATION

Burrows, Brownlee, Milik, de Vaux, Benoit, Strugnell, Cross

British mandate, Jordanian, 1967: Jewish

Jn Allegro argued Catholic dominated group was suppressing material -

1970: Sacred mushroom & the cross - origins of Xy to hallucinatory drugs

Robert Eisenman/Cal St, Hershel Shanks - questions of a cartel

Strugnell - anti-semitic remarks - very ill, dying...

1991: Wm Moffett, director of Huntington Library in San Marino, Calif., announced

complete set of photographs available -

Library had gotten them from Elizabeth Hay Bechtel - Photos at Claremont

After argument, had copy made, placed at Huntington -

Robert Eisenman got 1st crack - pierced Messiah... “reading not subject to doubt” ???

1991 - Michael Baigent & Richard Leigh: The Dead Sea Scroll Deception

Conspiracy theories (JFK etc.)

Now infrared reading techniques

Preservation issues! Pressed under glass, taped, climate…

NEW TESTAMENT

No NT passages --- Carsten Thiede & Matthew D’ancona/The Jesus Papyrus

7Q5 - nu/nu/eta/sigma - egennesen... Gennesaret? Mark 6:52 - another letter or 2

Second nu in severe doubt

No NT character mentioned

Rites, culturual milieu

Errors: TR = Jesus, Xns as successors to Essenes

Barbara Thiering - JBap = TR, Jesus as Wicked Priest - drugs...

Mikveh // JBap?

Lt/dark, shared meals

Messiah - Qumran looked for 2 - one from David, one from Aaron

4Q285- Robert Eisenman

“They will pierce the prince of the congregation, the branch of David”

More likely: branch of David will pierce/kill the wicked

whmytw - transl by Vermes

WEB SITES