The Testimony, April 2002 129

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1234 EDITOR: John Nicholls, 17 Upper Trinity Road, Halstead,

1234 1234 Essex, CO9 1EE. Tel. 01787 473089; 1234

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1234 e-mail: [email protected] 1234 Reviews 1234

1234 and the * Malcolm Edwards

HIS IS ONE of the latest books about the fire, or possibly by enemies, between 39 and Dead Sea Scrolls. It is written by the man 31 B.C. Twho co-authored The Papyrus with Dr Thiede also confirms that some of the lit- Matthew d’Anco, and who has written other erature that was used by the later group books about Jesus Christ and the origins of Chris- existed long before the origin of the Essene move- tianity. He is Professor of His- ment, and he seems positive, from information tory and Papyrology at STH Basel, Switzerland, found in what is known as The Damascus Docu- and also teaches at the Ben-Gurion University of ment, that the group was a breakaway from the the Negev in . He is also an Anglican min- Sadducean temple priesthood who went into ister. exile about 196 B.C. The book is refreshing in that it is written The much referred to Teacher of Righteous- from the standpoint of Christianity, whereas so ness, whom some writers about the scrolls have many others books on the subject contain much identified as Jesus and others as John the Baptist, anti-Christian bias. It appears in book shops on arose as their leader in 176 B.C., long before the same shelves as works by Barbara Thiering Jesus and John were born. The other character and Baigent and Lee, whose writings are now from the same non-Biblical scroll at Qumran was much outdated on the question of the identity of the , whom the author believes to the writers of the non-Biblical scrolls, and of the have been the high priest Jonathan, who was in period in which they wrote. office between 160 and 142 B.C. In discussing the of New Testament The Essenes times the author relies mostly on the Jewish writ- Professor Thiede dismisses as “wishful think- ers Josephus and Philo. He is convinced that ing” the view that the first Christians were there was an Essene community at Jerusalem Essenes, rightly pointing out that, since both during apostolic times, since Josephus mentions groups were Jewish, they were obviously influ- that there was a small city gate on the southwest enced by the same Hebrew Scriptures. He also hill called the “Gate of the Essenes”. If Jesus or rejects as “tendentious nonsense” what he calls any of the apostles had wished to contact them “the myths about the machinations of secret agen- they need not have travelled to Qumran to do cies hiding controversial scrolls”. so, as some scrolls writers have suggested. What- In addressing the matter of whether the Es- ever Essene groups there were in the land, they senes ever dwelt at Qumran, he points out that were either killed or dispersed during the Ro- the settlement there was not a secret retreat hid- man invasion of A.D. 68-70. den amongst the terrain of the Dead Sea shore but was clearly visible on a plateau. He is also About the jars most sceptical about the accuracy of the Roman The author reveals that placing documents in writer Pliny the Elder, who stated that the Es- terra-cotta jars was a common method of scroll senes lived by the Dead Sea. He writes that if any Essenes ever lived at Qumran, he doubts that they did so during the reign of the Herods. * The Dead Sea Scrolls and Jewish Origins of Chris- He points out that a group commonly called tianity, . 250-page paper- Essenes replaced an earlier settlement during back with nineteen pages of useful notes. the reign of John Hyrcanus (135-104 B.C.), but Published by Lion Publishing, Oxford, 2001. that it was destroyed either by earthquake or by ISBN 0 7459 5050 7. 130 The Testimony, April 2002 storage. He quotes Jeremiah 32:13,14 to show rebellion of A.D. 135. In the same cave were that even in Jeremiah’s day legal documents were found fragments of a leather scroll of the Minor stored in earthenware jars: “And I charged Baruch Prophets, written sometime between 50 B.C. and before them, saying, Thus saith the LORD of hosts, A.D. 50, but in the Greek language. the God of Israel; Take these evidences, this evi- In these writings, however, the Name of God dence of the purchase, both which is sealed, and (YHWH) was not written as kurios (Lord), as in this evidence which is open; and put them in an the Septuagint version, but in an ancient He- earthen vessel, that they may continue many brew script of the pre-Exile period. It is not clear days”. why this was done, but the most likely reason He also quotes the third-century writer Origen was to discourage the reader from audibly pro- as stating that in writing his own edition of the nouncing it, in keeping with the practice of Jews Hebrew and Greek Old Testament (A.D. 218-22) of that period and onwards. he had used an ancient copy of a Hebrew scroll In the Cave of Letters nearby, a legal docu- containing the Psalms, which had come from a ment emerged, which, when studied, confirmed jar found in a cave near Jericho. However, since Luke’s record of the census registration that com- there are many caves nearer to Jericho than Qum- pelled Joseph and Mary to journey from Naza- ran, it is not certain that the are reth to Bethlehem. meant. Some 500 years after this, a Christian bishop mentioned that “pious Jews” had told Arguments about the Qumran ruins him about such a cave near Jericho in which Over the years, views have changed as to what were found books of the Old Testament and other the Qumran ruins had been. The author disa- writings. grees with modern Israeli archaeologists who maintain that it was once a Jewish winter villa, Scrolls from the Masada area or possibly a fortress, and that the supposed Professor Thiede finds similarities between some scriptorium was a dining room. He inclines to non-Biblical scrolls and parts of the New Testa- the original theory that the Qumran ruins were ment, but not to try to prove that the first Chris- once a kind of monastery, with a library, and a tians originated from the writers of the scrolls scriptorium for scroll writing. In doing so he but simply to emphasise the Jewishness of both also contests the more recent opinion that the groups. For example, in caves near Masada three scrolls from the nearby caves were written else- documents have been found dating to about A.D. where and brought to Qumran for safekeeping 71, which consist of a promissory note, a mar- during the A.D. 68-70 war. He thinks that the riage contract and a divorce certificate, which buildings were at some time used for scroll writ- the author considers helpful to a better under- ing, but accepts that the absence of windows in standing of parts of the New Testament. the adjacent rooms argues against the use of them It is also most interesting that a scroll of Eze- as reading rooms, as was once thought. He be- kiel 37:1-14, the ‘dry bones’ prophecy, was found lieves that some of the caves themselves were hidden in the ruins of the synagogue in Masada, roomy enough to have served that purpose, but having escaped the Roman purge after the for- one would think that even large caves would tress was conquered. The Jews who had hidden require artificial lighting. the scrolls were obviously well acquainted with Thiede’s main reason for returning to these this prophecy and perhaps looked for its fulfil- original views seems to be based on unpublished ment in their times. scientific testing of the scroll jars. Samples from These scrolls also establish that at that period the jars were taken for testing by irradiation, and educated Jews were bilingual in Aramaic and the results have confirmed that those jars tested, Greek but had no interest in literary Latin. at least, were not imported, but had actually been made from local clay for the specific pur- The Cave of Horrors pose of storing scrolls. There is also evidence The Cave of Horrors, as it has come to be called, that a kiln existed at Qumran for this kind of was discovered in 1961 in the Nahal Hever area work. Until the results of all the tests are made of the Dead Sea, between Engedi and Masada. public, however, there must still be doubts. In The cave contained skeletons of about forty men, any case, it could be argued that many of the women and children said to have been starved scrolls might have been written elsewhere, even to death by the Romans during the Bar Kochba though the storage jars were made locally. The Testimony, April 2002 131

The scroll grouping scholar Geza Vermes considers the assumption There is a chapter that gives the key to the caves, to be “unsound”, from which one can gather and also a grouping of the scrolls and fragments. that the evidence is far from conclusive. This is too lengthy to reproduce here, but the Although strongly of the view that the frag- following is a brief outline: ments are part of Mark’s and Paul’s writings, our Biblical texts. All the books of the Old Testa- author, who, it must be remembered, is an An- ment except Esther. This category includes glican minister, does not think that it affects the Targums, which are Aramaic translations/ Christian belief one way or another. But if the interpretations of Hebrew books. texts are of the New Testament one wonders Pseudepigraphical books. Already known theo- how they came to be in the Qumran caves. The logical writings not considered part of the answer could be that the rabbis of that late first- Scripture canon, such as the Book of Enoch, the century period were not averse to studying Chris- Book of Noah, and the Book of Jubilees. tian writings if they could acquire them. For The Apocrypha. example, when James sent out his own letter to Sectarian Writings. Previously unknown writ- the scattered “twelve tribes”, copies could easily ings, such as The , The Copper have found their way from Jewish homes into Scroll, The and The Letter synagogues and been retained for study, either of the . out of interest or for the purpose of combating Commentaries. These are also called pesharim, Christian doctrine. the most notable being a commentary on Whatever is the case, any first-century evi- Habakkuk. dence of apostolic writings can only be a plus for the truth of Christianity, so we should welcome The scrolls and the Septuagint it, considering that critics love to remind us that A significant aspect of the study of the Dead Sea the earliest manuscripts of Christian writings are Scrolls is what has emerged about the Greek from the fourth century. version of the Old Testament, the Septuagint, which was generally thought to be inferior to the Jesus and the Essenes Hebrew Massoretic text from which our Old The latter part of the book deals with the at- Testament has been translated. tempts by some scrolls writers to belittle the ori- The author comments that the Septuagint was gins of Christianity by trying to link Jesus with very popular amongst Greek-speaking Jews of the Essenes at Qumran. The author cites news Roman Palestine, and points out that fragments headlines in the Sunday Times of 7 November of an ancient Hebrew text of one of the books of 1999, which proclaimed, “Scroll names Jesus as Samuel found in Cave 4 was closer to the Sep- sect member”. The scroll in question is called tuagint than to the Massoretic text. He adds: “It The Angel Scroll, which was said to be in the is no longer possible to claim that the Greek process of being studied in a monastery on the Bible which was the one almost exclusively used German-Austrian border. The story was eventu- by Jews outside the Holy Land in New Testa- ally debunked by Bargil Pixter, an expert on ment times—and by the authors of the New Essenism, even though he himself has long Testament themselves—is automatically less au- sought to establish a connection between Jesus thentic, less reliable, when it differs from the and the Essenes. standard Hebrew text in modern translations”. Professor Thiede is quite scathing about writ- ers who have fantasies that some of the Dead Sea New Testament fragments? Scrolls are coded messages about Jesus and the Much controversy has raged around what are apostles, and quite obviously he includes Barbara called fragments 7Q4 and , which are identi- Thiering amongst these people. He continues: fied by some with 1 Timothy 3:16–4:1 and Mark “Thus it is sobering and healthy to realize that 6:52,53. These were found in Cave 7, and the many, if not most of the central early tenets of author considers that they are indeed Greek frag- the Christian faith have no parallels, no ‘inspira- ments of those two New Testament writings. tion’ as it were, in the Scrolls from Qumran. Scrolls experts have debated for years whether Here are two Jewish movements who both drew or not this is the case, but what concerns our- on the same sources”. selves is whether it really matters and how much Summarising on the possibility of New Testa- it affects Christian faith. Well-known scrolls ment links with the Dead Sea Scrolls, the author 132 The Testimony, April 2002 comments that we should be more surprised at emiah 31:31-34, the last verse of this passage, their absence than their presence. He speaks of about the forgiveness of sins, was fulfilled only connections sometimes made between the reli- in the Son of God. gious practices found in the Community Rule and There is much more in the book of a technical among the early Christians as “weak”, and in nature for those who wish to delve deeper, but regard to the mention in one scroll of the new sufficient has been said to make it absolutely covenant, he quite correctly comments that, clear that the Dead Sea Scrolls present no chal- whereas both groups independently refer to Jer- lenge whatsoever to Christian faith.

EDITOR: David Burges, 7 Whitehead Drive, Wellesbourne, Warwick, CV35 9PW. Science Tel. 01789 842692; e-mail: [email protected]

Science and the Creator “To shake terribly the earth” David Burges

HE PSALMIST, contemplating the glory ters on the earth’s surface, in addition to the of the night sky, rejoiced that “The heav- famous Arizona Crater, even though most are Tens declare the glory of God; and the fir- less obvious because of erosion and vegetation mament sheweth His handywork” (Ps. 19:1). But cover. the heavens also conceal more sinister objects, Asteroids are irregular pieces of rock varying which, it is now realised, could pose a real dan- in size from less than a kilometre to several hun- ger to the earth. Every few months there are dred kilometres across. Some 8,000 of them oc- sensational headlines in the media because an cupy the asteroid belt orbiting the sun in the asteroid has been reported to have passed close region between Mars and Jupiter, but many oth- to the earth, only narrowly avoiding the peril of ers have been identified in elongated orbits which a catastrophic impact. Hollywood has cashed in cross those of the inner planets, including the on the concern with more than one ‘disaster earth. It is thought that these have been shaken movie’ based upon the idea of heroic efforts to from the asteroid belt by the gravitational influ- save the earth from devastation by an asteroid ence of Jupiter. impact. The danger they pose to the earth arises from their enormous kinetic energy, resulting from Asteroids their mass and high speed, typically fifty kilo- In fact scientists are now taking seriously the metres per second. It has been calculated that an potential hazards because improved observation object only ten kilometres across striking the earth techniques have shown that there are a large would generate a blast far greater than any nu- number of such objects in earth-crossing orbits, clear explosion that man has released. And this and also there is ample evidence of past im- in turn would produce firestorms, vast clouds of pacts.1 smoke, bringing an extended period of darkness The moon and the other inner planets, Mer- and cold,2 as well as widespread hurricanes, poi- cury, Venus and Mars, are all covered in impact craters. The Apollo missions to the moon con- firmed conclusively that its craters were formed 1. “Bolts from the blue”, John and Mary Gribbin, New by the impact of asteroids or comets and not Scientist—Inside Science No. 113, 12 Sept. 1998. by volcanic action. Moreover, radar mapping 2. Similar to the so-called ‘nuclear winter’ which it is from space has likewise revealed many such cra- predicted would result from a nuclear war.