DCHindley

I think there is a large amount of angry knee-jerk reactionism coming from both sides of the debate over the origins of the DSS.

If the DSS are seen as the product of a fringe group, and thus not good representatives of Judaism as it existed in the period they were composed or copied (roughly 2nd century BCE to maybe 68 CE), then Rabbis and Christians can go on believing that they know what Judaism was really like, or at least should be like.

If they are actually a sample of generally circulated books, as Norman Golb and some liberal and non-religious Jews and Christians think, then the Judaism imagined by Rabbis and Christians is way off base and everything is now subject to revision. That is a very threatening position.

Remember how many Christian scholars recoiled in horror when some interpreters thought that certain fragments indicated belief in a suffering messiah was not unique to Christianity? The implication was that Christianity was merely a product of its time, rather than a special revelation or a unique creative elevation of religious ethics over that of Judaism.

Here we have Jews taking sides based on what they believe Judaism really was or should be.

DCH

Petergdi

I don't remember that. Which ones are you thinking of?

Peter.

Toto

That was the Gabriel Stone.

Petergdi

And who recoiled in horror as D C Hindley suggests that many Christian scholars did?

The horror expressed by April DeConnick and PaleoBabble was not at the thought that an earlier belief in a suffering messiah would undermine Christianity in any way, because it doesn't and wouldn't, but at the thought of sensationalistic journalists telling people that it undermined Christianity. There is a big difference.

Peter.

DCHindley

No, actually I was thinking of the furor that occurred during the early days of their study.

There had been a great deal of foot dragging with regard to the publication of the fragments, but some experts were able to get hold of parts of the texts.

Some of these preliminary translations were reconstructed from fragments, and others had to be translated out of context because the greater part of the works were still jealously guarded by the scholars to whom they were originally entrusted. Some of these had emphasized words or phrases that had parallels to Christian dogma expressed in the NT.

I am about to go to bed, so it will have to wait for tomorrow to fill in the salacious detail.

DCH

DCHindley

Aren't you kind of doing that right now? Besides, I am not the DSS, just some guy expressing my opinion. The DSS were a cache of genuine documents in Hebrew and Aramaic that were unprecedented. What they said mooted a great number of assumptions previously held about Judaism. We could no longer speak of "Pharisee Quietists" and other stereotypes.

Yeah, it's always those "sensationalistic journalists." When I get to the details of what I did mean sometime tomorrow, you will see that the reaction to the initial publication of scroll fragments included this charge, but many felt that this overreaction was more to do with fear that the faith of the layperson would be destroyed if the scrolls were too openly discussed.

DCH

Petergdi

Nope. I just think that when someone says "many Christian scholars did x" it is reasonable to say "name them and show me where they did x"

I don't think the faith of the layperson is really the big issue. Sensationalistic stories about discoveries which supposedly strike at the very foundations of Christianity have been a regular feature since the 19th century. Almost all laypeople have heard it before, and that was as true in the 1950s as it is now.

I think a bigger problem is that the sensationalism seems designed to create a prejudice against Christianity among nonchristians.

Peter.

DCHindley

Please excuse my delay. One of my children downloaded the "Alpha Antivirus" virus on another computer. I am trying to bypass all the things it has done to prevent me from eradicating it. Once I accomplish that, I'll respond.

DCH

PS: Why didn't Norton Antivirus detect this thing? If anyone can recommend a bona fide removal tool that isn't itself a virus (most look mighty suspicious), let me know ...

DCHindley

Peter,

I guess the reaction started with a debate about the relative date of the scrolls, with Drs William H. Brownlee and John C. Trever noting indications of early date when they photographed five scrolls in 1948, and especially with William F. Albright agreeing they dated to about the 1st century BC or earlier.

When this opinion was announced in articles by Trever (BASOR #113 Feb 1949) and Albright (BASOR 115 Oct 1949), all hell broke loose!

Godfrey Driver had from the start expressed caution on a pre-christian date for the scrolls, saying in an Aug 23, 1949 article in the London Times (page 7), that he preferred a 1st century CE date. This was at least reasoned. There were numerous articles by others, most suggesting an early medieval date for them on the basis of the 1896 discovery of the Damascus Document in a geniza in Old Cairo by Solomon Schecter, which corresponded to the Community Rule(s) from the DSS, as this geniza cache also included copies of works by Annan Ben David, founder of the Karaite movement (ca 715 - ca 795 or 811 CE).

But the most extreme reaction of all came from Solomon Zeitlin, who wrote several inflammatory articles in JQR: "A Commentary on the Book of Habakkuk, Important Discovery or Hoax?" (NS xxxix, 1948-49, pp 235-47); "Scholarship and the Hoax of Recent Discoveries," (ibid. pp 337-63); "The Alleged Antiquity of the Scrolls," NS xl, 1949-50, pp 57-78. Where have we heard that kind of talk most recently?

Then Albright followed up with a deftly worded 1951 article in which he says "The new evidence with regard to the beliefs and practices of Jewish sectarians of the last two centuries B.C. bids fair to revolutionize or approach to the beginnings of Christianity." (BASOR, Supplementary Studies, #10-12, 1951 pg 58). This did not bring much criticism his way, but not so when André Dupont-Sommer presented a paper to the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres on May 26, 1950 (reported in Le Monde, 28-9, May 1950, p. 4) that called the Teacher of Righteousness an "exact prototype of Jesus," and also said "All the problems relative to primitive Christianity henceforth find themselves placed in a new light, which forces us to reconsider them completely" in Dead Sea Scrolls, A Preliminary Survey (1952, e.t. of Aperçus préliminaires sur les manuscrits de la mer Morte, 1950). He apparently got plenty of flack in journal articles for that.

The dating furor died down with the carbon 14 tests in 1952, which pretty much confirmed a pre Christian date for them. However, monographs were not so much as trickling out of the scholars the scrolls had been entrusted to. The DJD series only began in 1955.

Public interest started to rise due to a long article by reporter and literary critic Edmund Wilson in the May 14, 1955 New Yorker magazine. He had already been following the discovery and acquisition of the DSS since they began to be discovered in 1947. The article asked whether scholars were unwilling to discuss the parallels between the scroll documents and rabbinical Judaism as it appeared to be emerging during the 1st century, and the earliest forms of Christianity. The article was turned into a 120 page booklet later in 1955 (The Scrolls from the Dead Sea), and later expanded it to 320 pages in 1969 (The Dead Sea Scrolls 1947-1969, revised to 420 pp in 1977/78). He expressed his opinion that:

One would like to see these problems discussed; and in the meantime, one cannot but ask oneself whether the scholars who have been working on the scrolls - so many of whom have taken Christian orders or been trained in the rabbinical tradition - may not have been somewhat inhibited in dealing with such questions as these by their various religious commitments ... one feels a certain nervousness, a reluctance, to take hold of the subject and to place it in historical perspective. [1969, pp 97-98]

According to A. Powell Davies, "The New Testament Scholars had to begin to say something. And what some of them said was that they did not think much of Mr Wilson. He is not a scholar, he is only a reporter. What they neglect to mention is that he is a very good reporter and that he has transmitted quite correctly what the experts who have been working on the scrolls have come to think about them." (The Meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls, 1956, p.23). Are we seeing a precursor to the present day charges of "media sensationalism"?

John Allegro made a series of radio lectures in England in January 1956, the third of which drew attention to the kinds of parallels mentioned by Wilson. A New York Times article gave a report about the lectures, dated Feb 5, 1956. Time Magazine ran an article on "Crucifixion Before Christ" (Feb 6). On March 16, scroll team heavyweights John Strugnell, Roland de Vaux, J. T. Milik, Patrick Skehan and Jean Starkey signed a letter to the London Times denying they saw any such connections, saying Allegro has "misread the texts or he has built up a chain of conjectures which the materials do not support." Ouch!

This was followed in June by K. Smyth's article 'The Truth about the Dead Sea Scrolls' (Irish Digest, June 1956, pp 31ff), which ripped into Wilson, Dupont-Sommer, and especially Allegro. He says the "Scrolls add surprisingly little to our knowledge current among the Jews from, say, 200 BC to the Christian era," and "It was not from such a sect that 'Jesus learned how to be a Messiah' … Rather, it was from soil such as this that sprang the thorns which tried to choke the seed of the Gospel." Double Ouch!

I'll stop here in 1956, since this was the year of my birth. "We can't do this all night" as pitch man Vince Shlomi says about "Shamwow." But don't the reactions outlined here seem a little "personal" to you? Even if one critic disagrees with the conclusion of another, there is a certain "business of criticism" that is supposed to prevail. What I see here is almost a kind of "righteous anger," ready to shoot down the infidel, woudn't you agree? How is this different than Taliban who kill women for sending their kids to school or work outside the home?

DCH

Petergdi

Dave,

Thanks very much for getting back to me on this. It is always great to have new information.

I do not have enough knowledge to comment very much, but it seems to me that the reaction was provoked largely by "this will turn your world upside down" types of claims.

I'm not hugely adverse to having my world turned upside down, I have had the experience before and I believe I benefited from it, although such an experience is always pretty overwhelming at the time. I do think it is offensive to make a forecast of such an event for someone else even if you find that conclusion inescapable.

I'm very glad that the scrolls did get published. They did not turn my world upside down, but they have given me interesting information.

I'm all for the business of criticism. But many of the "conclusions" - that we have to "completely reconsider" "all the problems relative to primitive Christianity" - hints that the scrolls will give serious trouble to both Jewish and Christian orthodoxy - seem designed to make people touchy.

Showing (or at least making a real attempt at showing) someone that what they think is wrong is the business of criticism. Telling someone, without showing, doesn't really have the excuse of being for the advancement of knowledge. And the fact that the DSS were unpubished for so long dosen't make it a good excuse.

Peter.