Fifty Years
After the Scrolls' Discovery
by Simon Griver
Back in 1947, a Bedouin shepherd boy stumbled upon one of the century's
greatest finds in a dark cave in the Judean
desert. He sold three of the seven scrolls
to an antiquities dealer in Bethlehem,
who in turn sold them to the eminent archeologist
Prof Eliezer Sukenik of the Hebrew University.
The four remaining scrolls found their way
to the U.S. and were purchased in 1954 by
Prof Sukenik's son, Professor Yigael
Yadin, on behalf of the government of
Israel. Over the years, thousands more fragments
of parchment, some papyrus and some leather,
were found and pieced together into 80 documents.
Today, the majority of the Dead
Sea Scrolls have already been interpreted
and published. Since 1965, they have been
on display at the Israel
Museum in a distinctive white pavilion
called the Shrine of the Book, which has become
a popular tourist site in Israel.
At first glance, the massive international interest in the
Dead Sea Scrolls is baffling. The ragged pieces of parchment contain so much
scribble in the eyes of many who look at them and are even difficult to
decipher for those who know Hebrew. Yet the dry desert climate of the region
meant that the parchments were amazingly well-preserved, and historians were
able to uncover their secrets.
"The Dead Sea Scrolls represent a turning point in
Jewish history," stresses Dr. Adolfo Roitman, curator of the Shrine of
the Book. "They reveal the link between Biblical Israel and the Jewish
culture of the Talmudic period."
According to Dr. Magen Broshi, who served as curator of the
Shrine of the Book from 1965 to 1995, it is the fascinating story behind the
scrolls that has captured the world's imagination.
"Not only are the scrolls
the oldest known copy of the Old
Testament," he explains, "but
they belonged to the Essenes,
a mysterious ascetic Jewish sect that existed
about 2,000 years ago and is believed to have
had a great influence on the early Christians."
Most of the Essenes, who were mentioned by
the contemporary historians Pliny and Josephus,
lived on the northwestern shore of the Dead
Sea region. Nearly a third of the documents
that were found in the caves of Qumran overlooking the Dead Sea contain the books
of the Old Testament, save for the Book
of Esther. "The levity of the Book
of Esther would not have been to the sect's
taste," speculates Dr. Broshi. "The
banquets, the drunkenness and Esther's flirtation
with Ahasuerus would not have been approved
of by the Essenes."
Many of the non-Old Testament scrolls contain details about
the Essene sect and their values. One of the scrolls tells the story of the
battle between the "sons of light and the sons of darkness" and
echoes the struggle between good and evil. The Essenes included celibate men,
a phenomenon rarely found in Judaism, and their influence on the early
Christians is unquestionable, making the scrolls of immense interest to
Christian, as well as Jewish scholars.
The 50 years since the scrolls' discovery have been marked
by enthusiastic international debate as to the dating of the scrolls, the
nature of the Dead Sea sect, and more. Controversy has also surrounded the
slow pace of the publishing of the scrolls and the question of access to the
scrolls. To mark half a century since the discovery of the first scrolls the
Israel Philatelic Service issued a stamp depicting one of the ceramic jars in
which the scrolls were found against a backdrop of the Judean Desert....
Undoubtedly these ancient manuscripts will remain a witness
to Jewish continuity and a source of knowledge regarding the roots of
Christianity for centuries to come.
Sources: Israel Magazine-On-Web, July 1997, Israeli
Foreign Ministry |