Profiles in Deception: The Dead Sea Scrolls
This is not a book review as I had promised earlier. Rather, this entry seeks to explore my own understanding of the controversial Dead Sea Scrolls affair.
Note: I’ve drawn the entire material in this entry from the Profiles in Deception book.
Introduction
The Dead Sea Scrolls is a collection of 2000 year-old manuscripts that tell us that everything attributed to Jesus–and Christianity–is borrowed from an extremist Jewish sect that existed in the Qumran region of Palestine on the west shore of the Dead Sea.
Map modified from http://www.sundayschoolcourses.com/deadsea/qumran.jpg
John Marco Allergro, a Biblical scholar of the previous generation conclude that Jesus was a “little more than a personification of the Messianic expectations of the members of an extremist Jewish sect of Qumran in the first century of Christianity.” What this means for the Church is pretty straightforward–the Dead Sea Scrolls overturns the core of Christianity by giving rise to the speculation (already widespread) that Jesus Christ may never have existed as a historical figure. As a corollary, we find it useful to recall the huge controversy surrounding Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code.
Discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls
In 1947, a group of Bedouins wandering in the ruins that “dot the west coast of the Dead Sea” (a region now in Israel) discovered several jars containing bundles of parchment. These are famously known as the Dead Sea Scrolls, a bundle of manuscripts authored in the Hebrew and Aramaic script. Some of these date back to the first century of Christianity and others, to an even earlier period.
These scrolls are also known as Qumran texts named after the region they were composed at.
Most of the Qumran texts were composed between 150 BC — 70 AD during the rule of the Macabbeans. The Qumranians and their settlement were both destroyed by the Romans in the First Jewish War of 66-74 AD. The texts they have preserved have proved signficant in understanding the historical, cultural and social “movements that culminated in the birth of Christianity.”
The Vatican Obfuscation
The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls rightly excited Biblical scholars the world over.
Ever since its discovery, the scrolls were handed over to the Ecole Biblique (EB) in Jerusalem, a Dominican institution. The Ecole now embarked on the the task of collating, editing, and translating the scrolls. Apart from the inhouse Biblical experts, it invited scholars from all over the world to assist in this work. John Allegro, a British scholar with liberalist leanings joined the team in 1953.
Suddenly something happened, which caused the Ecole to relegate the task to the cans.
The Ecole inexplicably put the project on hold and became uncooperative with the scholars. Its delaying tactics caused Geza Vermes, a Biblical scholar to remark in 1977:
On the thirtieth anniversary of their first coming to light the world is entitled to ask he authorities responsible for the publication of the Qumran scrolls…what they intend to do about this lamentable state of affairs. For unless drastic measures are taken at once, the greatest and the most valuable of all Hebrew and Aramaic manuscript discoveries is likely to become the academic scandal par excellence of the twentieth century.
The Ecole remained steadfast in its stubborness. An exasperated Geza Vermes wrote again, eight years later, in 1985:
Eight years ago I defined this situation as a ‘lamentable state of affairs’ and warned that it was ‘likely to become the academic scandal par excellence of the twentieth century’ unless drastic measures were taken at once. Regrettably, this has not happened and the present chief editor of the fragments [of the scrolls] has in the meantime gone on record as one who rejects as unjust and unreasonable any criticism regarding the delay.
The reason for this inertia lay in the decisions taken by the powers-that-be, that is, the EB was controlled by the Pontificial Biblical Commission, a “Vatican office that is responsible for all doctrinal matters related to the Catholic Church.” John Allegro states that the Scrolls’ findings would undermine the Church position on Christianity in a fundamental way.
Father Ronald De Vaux at the time–around 1950–was head of the Ecole. A devout figure, his worldview included subordinating scholarship at the altar of faith.
Around 1950, a few Qumran texts were released to the public. The results were disastrous to the Church. To quote N.S Rajaram, “Biblical scholars soon began to notice that they indicated that beliefs and practices of what we now call early Christianity…. seemed to have existed long before him [Jesus Christ].” This early Christianity was an extremist Jewish movement that arose as a reaction against the secularizing influence of the Graeco-Roman world.
Andre Dupon-Summer, a French scholar noticed that some texts referred to a Teacher of Righteousness and his persecution and death. Dupon concluded that this Teacher was the model for the later Jesus of the Gospels. This is a shattering blow to the Church–for it means that Jesus was not a historical but a mythical figure, “created to express some Messianic hopes…then current among members of the extremist Jewish sect in Palestine.” This extremist Jewish sect according to Dupon was the early Church of Jerusalem. John Allegro stated in a radio programme, which was subsequently reproduced in the New York Times that “The origins of some Christian rituals…can be seen in the documents of an extremist Jewish sect that existed for more than a hundred years before the birth of Christ.” (Emphasis added)
Naturally, the Church put out a systemmatic smear campagin against Allegro, which effectively destroyed his career. Rajaram remarks,”if Allegro were really talking nonsense, de Vaux…could have presented their evidence and refuted him. The very fact that they continued to hide their texts [the Scrolls], choosing character assassination over refutation shows that they did not have truth on their side.”
In the next part, I shall examine the crucial item: what exactly do the Scrolls contain that a body as powerful as the Vatican should take these extraordinary steps?
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Sandeep,
Fascinating post.
I also refer you to the school of textual criticism that re-examines the chronology and traditions of the Bible - both old and new testaments. Textual criticism is now part and parcel of biblical studies in the curriculum of divinity schools linked to mainstream Protestant churches.
Best
Jaffna,
More fascinating–to an extent alarming–is the subject itself. As for the Chronology issue, please wait for my next post on the subject. I believe that post should stimulate more discussion. BTW, I sent you a couple of emails on guest blogging here. Didn’t you get them? If you didn’t here’s my offer: I invite you to guest blog on Seriously Sandeep, the same way you do on Secular Right.
Sandeep, great line of inquiry, and one which is far overdue for some Indians who see no problem “accepting” an exclusivist, dividing religion like xtianity, but increasingly see benign, uniting, indigenous religion as “a collection of myths”.
Somewhere down the line you need to look at Caesar’s Messiah, a book that lists how Jesus could not have existed, since his life story is so very closely based on the story of Titus, the Roman Caesar Vespasian’s elder son. Titus was literally “sent by his father” to subdue the messianic Jews. He started his campaign against them at the Lake (called Sea) of Gallillee, where Roman soldiers in boats hunted down fleeing Jewish rebels in the water. They would catch these men like fish, bring them on board, and kill them. They joked that this was like “fishing for men”. “Fishing for men” at the sea of Gallillee is how Jesus begins his ministry. See the parallel?
There are many more parallels which occur in Titus’ and Jesus’ life in the same sequence, and the chance that thses parallels occur randomly, in the same sequence, is next to 0.
http://www.caesarsmessiah.com/main.html
There is a “summary” provided on the page linked above..
It was while I was a Trappist monk in Berryville, VA in the early 1960’s that I first became curious about the whole subject of epistemology and the sociology of knowledge, and long before I had a name for it, my first real go at it was a jarring firsthand glimpse into the closed-door politics of scripture authentication.
The community I was in had several exegetes and one recognized Biblical linguist. For the first three years I was there, this fellow was at the École Biblique in Jerusalem, where the Dead Sea scrolls were then kept under very tight security. His mission at the École was to be one of the scholars to add his expertise to the then new (1963) translation, “The Jerusalem Bible.” His particular bailiwick was his fluency in eight ancient Semitic dialects including Aramaic, plus the Septuagint Greek and the spoken Greek of the New Testament era. Fr. Cyril (sorry, I can’t remember the fellow’s last name) would read us a passage from Isaiah in the RSV, for example, and then sight-translate it back into ancient Hebrew and then into Canaanite so we could hear the poetic cadence of the galloping horses. But I digress.
Upon his return from Jerusalem, he gradually shared with us his own and the other translators’ disappointment and frustration when their input was repeatedly overruled by ecclesiastical censors on the grounds that their understanding of many passages rendered them unfit to print, because they failed to support established doctrines. In one very memorable instance, I recall him discussing the Hebrew word which has always been rendered as “commandment,” which from the usage in other writings of that time should be more accurately translated as “maxim” or “truism.”
Now I didn’t know Cyril prior to his sojourn in Jerusalem. but suffice it to say that was a man who was both deeply pious and obviously troubled by something much more threatening than a snub from his superiors. Nor do I believe he would have been much bothered by John Marco Allegro’s take on it all. Whatever was bothering Fr. Cyril, with his incredible fluency in those dialects was whatever he had read for himself in those texts.
That was my introduction to the smoke-filled room, if you will, of scripture translation and authentication. Sadly, Fr. Cyril and two other monks were killed instantly in 1967 when their car collided with a Greyhound bus on U.S, Rte. 7 between Berryville and Winchester, VA.
The truth does not does remain hidden forever. It emerges when least expected and from unexpected sources, at times. Read “Jesus lived in India”, by Helger Kersten, and see how dogma is challenged, in many of its forms.
15 April 2008