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Chicago scholar's long-discredited theory on Dead Sea Scrolls finds support in new archeological dig
Posted on Thursday, November 02, 2006 (CST) by Thoth
 The Dead Sea Scrolls have provoked endless controversies since the ancient manuscripts, hidden away in the age of Jesus, were recovered in an obscure corner of the Holy Land in the late 1940s. But one thing scholars have agreed upon: Norman Golb is wrong.
Golb, a feisty University of Chicago professor, has long argued that the scrolls are a sort of library of writings by different Jewish sects hidden near a site known as Qumran to protect the texts from Roman invaders.
Most scholars, meanwhile, have insisted that the scrolls are the work of a tiny sect that wrote them in a monastery at Qumran. "In 40 years, about the only one Golb has been able to convince is himself," said Eugene Ulrich a University of Notre Dame professor and eminent scrolls scholar.
But a new
archeological dig has produced evidence that puts a spotlight on Golb's
long discredited theories and suggests new ideas about the missing link
between Judaism and its offshoot, Christianity.
"A lot of people said he
was wrong," said Hershel Shanks, editor of Biblical Archaeology Review,
"But Norman had one small piece of the puzzle all along."
In its September issue,
Shanks' magazine reported on an archeological dig in Israel that
backstops Golb's ideas about the scrolls--religious texts written in
Hebrew and Aramaic, the lingua franca of the Near East in biblical
times.
The dig raises questions
about whether the crumbling ruins at Qumran are the remains of a
monastery, a fortress or a pottery factory.
If the remains are a
monastery, as many scholars have long argued, it's likely that the
scrolls were written there. If not, they could have been brought to the
site, which bolsters Golb's argument.
At first blush, the debate
between Golb and his critics might seem the hairsplitting for which the
Ivory Tower is famed. But Golb said the information from the dig could
help shape a broader story about the history of Judaism and
Christianity.
"I've argued that the
scrolls tell us about the intellectual struggles, the spiritual
longings, the intense cultural ferment of the world in which
Christianity was born and rabbinical Judaism was taking shape," said
Golb, 78.
He thinks that Judaism and
Christianity then were running along parallel tracks: Both faiths were
often confused and struggling to refit older religious conceptions to
more contemporary concerns.
Those ideas can be
discomforting to believers. Everyone wants to see his or her religion
as unique, even Dead Sea Scrolls scholars.
The first great scholar of
the scrolls was Rev. Roland de Vaux, a Dominican priest. He headed the
group that studied the scrolls after they were discovered in 1947 in
caves where they had been hidden for two millenniums. De Vaux's team
also excavated nearby ancient ruins at Qumran, near the shores of the
Dead Sea.
It was already known that
among the ancient Jews was a group that withdrew from the
hustle-and-bustle of society to form monastic-like groups in the
solitude of the desert.
Putting two and two
together, De Vaux identified the Dead Sea Scrolls with the group, known
as the Essenes, and he announced the ruins to have been the site of
their composition. His team labeled one section a "scriptorium," as a
scribes' room in a medieval monastery was known.
Golb, who received his PhD
at Johns Hopkins University in Judaic and Semitic studies, recalled
being troubled by De Vaux's theory since his student days.
When De Vaux came to
Chicago for a lecture in 1968, Golb expressed reservations about De
Vaux's theory, a bold move for a junior scholar talking to a gray
eminence.
"Father De Vaux told me to
go to Qumran and I wouldn't have any doubts," Golb recalled. "When I
finally could, I looked at it and said to myself: `This wasn't a
monastery. It was a fortress.'"
When Golb shared that hunch
publicly, the response was large doses of academic vitriol. Reviewing a
French translation of his 1995 book, "Who Wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls?"
a European scholar called it "a castle of cards resting on a chain of
unproven assumptions."
Golb is capable of
responding in kind. When museums hold traveling exhibitions of the
scroll, he dashes off long, feisty memos criticizing them for not
including his views. When the Field Museum hosted the scrolls six years
ago, a label on one display case referred to the "scriptorium" at
Qumran. Two inkwells, Golb shot back, do not a scribes' workshop make.
Site was fortress, article says
Now, comes independent
verification of Golb's hunch. As noted in Biblical Archaeology Review,
Yitzhak Magen and Yuval Peleg concluded that the site wasn't a
monastery and had nothing to do with the Essenes. It began as a
fortress--just as Golb said--when the Jews had an independent kingdom.
When the Romans afterward took over Palestine, it housed a pottery
factory.
"Whosoever severs the link
between the site, its Essene community and the scrolls found in the
caves, of necessity also undermines all previous ideas about the nature
and provenance of the scrolls," Magen and Peleg wrote.
Those words constitute a
great vindication, if not total victory, for Golb, noted Robert
Eisenman, a professor at California State University at Long Beach.
"Magen and Peleg have done professor Golb a great service," said
Eisenman.
Eisenman added that he is noncommittal on the larger implications of Golb's views.
Clay pots held the scrolls
The finding that Qumran
went from fortress to pottery factory fits in nicely with Golb's
scenario. The scrolls were found in large clay pots, which could have
been purchased at the factory by whoever left them in the nearby caves,
he notes.
Golb observes that the
scrolls were hidden about the time that the Romans were suppressing a
revolt of their Jewish subjects. According to Golb, the scrolls
constituted a religious library carried off from Jerusalem during the
fighting for safe keeping.
Even orthodox scrolls
scholars have been puzzled by the great variety of the scrolls' texts,
some of which express contradictory religious views. That is hard to
explain on the theory that they were produced by one sect--which,
presumably, would honor its own ideas but not others'.
Golb says that the handwriting of about 500 different scribes can be recognized in the scrolls.
"In fact, at Qumran there is room for at most 20 to 30 people," Magen and Peleg report.
Even Ulrich, the Notre Dame
scholar and critic of Golb's, has had to modify the classical theory in
light of his criticism. He accepts that Qumran could only house a
handful of residents but posits that manuscripts were carried there by
generations of recruits to the Essene cause, each bringing sacred texts
of previous religious affiliations.
As Golb sees it, even that
much movement in the other side's position is a recognition of a point
he has been trying to make for decades.
"Christianity didn't come
from one little sect, the Essenes," said Golb, a hint of triumph in his
voice. "Christianity came out of the tremendous variety of the
contemporary Jewish community."
Copyright: Chicago Tribune
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Re: Chicago scholar's long-discredited theory on Dead Sea Scrolls finds support in ne
by visionenhanced on Tuesday, November 21, 2006 (CST)
(User Info | Send a Message) | | the problem all started way back when people wanted for their religion to be unique. real infoormation was lost and fights broke out because for what ever reason the other person was wrong. has it been so long that we have forgotten the truth? all we had to do was just believe in god, whether it be a frequency or a man or a woman, or the center of our galaxy. free will to believe in what we wish, and to live as we wish. there is no my god your god his god her god. god is the begining the end the alpha the omega the rose of sharon, in other words evrything. unless one considers money and material items as such. once it became about money from letting the same ones have control then that have control now. scholars are the worst scientists because they have been trained by those before them to believe as they do.their objective view stripped from them by biased people who only want the correct textbook answer so they can pass to the next grade. i like to see people like this Golb gentleman start to come out on top of the nay sayers. a picture is worth a thousand words. and nothing compares to actually being there. |
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