Christianity and the Dead Sea Scrolls* Malcolm Edwards
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The Testimony, April 2002 129 1234 1234 1234 1234 EDITOR: John Nicholls, 17 Upper Trinity Road, Halstead, 1234 1234 Essex, CO9 1EE. Tel. 01787 473089; 1234 1234 1234 e-mail: [email protected] 1234 Reviews 1234 1234 Christianity and the Dead Sea Scrolls* 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 Jesus 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 Qumran group books about Jesus Christ and the origins of Chris- existed long before the origin of the Essene move- tianity. He is Professor of New Testament 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 Israel. 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 The other character and Baigent and Lee, whose writings are now from the same non-Biblical scroll at Qumran was much outdated on the question of the identity of the Wicked Priest, whom the author believes to the writers of the non-Biblical scrolls, and of the have been the high priest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 Essenes 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, Carsten Peter Thiede. 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 Qumran caves 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.