Dead Sea recriminations

Scholars have argued bitterly about the Qumran Scrolls ever since they were discovered in 1947. A new book shows they are still at it, says David V Barrett The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Jewish Origins of Christianity by Carsten Peter Thiede, Lion £18 SINCE THEIR discovery in 1947, the Dead Sea Scrolls have been the focus of controversy. The long delays hi their publication prompted rumours that they contained something to challenge, perhaps even to disprove. Christianity; the Vatican was accused of suppressing the evidence. An early Scrolls scholar, John M Allegro, having apparently been shabbily treated by the team leaders, went off to write about Christianity originating in sacred mushrooms. Another well-respected scholar, Norman Golb, has seriously challenged the longassumed link between Qumran and the Essenes. A number of writers have claimed that John the Baptist was an Essene, or that Jesus was an Essene, or that the early Christians were Essenes.
Carsten Peter Thiede takes a sensible line on this. He finds similarities between the early Christians and the Essenes, "areas where the Jews who followed the different forms of Essenism and those who followed the message of Jesus appear to be closer to each other than to groups like the Sadducees and Pharisees". But he goes on: "Then again, in other areas, the first followers of the Christ Jesus are closer to the Pharisees than to the Essenes, and so forth. No movement lived a solitary life..."
This is a major point throughout the book: that the various strands ofludaism in the first century AD, including the followers of Jesus, were fully aware of each other, knew each others' teachings, and had much in common as well as many differences. (The Jewish historian Josephus apparently tried out several, including the Essenes, before plumping for the Pharisees.) It was certainly not the case that there was one monolithic religion called Judaism, and another brand new religion called Christianity. The first followers of Jesus were Jews, worshiped as Jews, preached to Jews. (For most modern theologians, it must be said, this is hardly startling news.)
In some areas Thiede, who is also an Anglican clergyman, takes quite a traditionalist theological stance, as, for example, in accepting LI Peter as written by Peter. In others he accepts new schol
arship suggesting that, for instance, Peter, Andrew, James and John were not humble fishermen, but welleducated "multilingual entrepreneurs". Indeed, he says, most Jews of the time would be more familiar with Greek than with Hebrew. early writing of the documents that eventually became the New Testament. It must be said that Thiede's identification of fragment 7Q5 as "the oldest papyrus of Mark's Gospel" has been dismissed by Geza Vermes, one of the leading Scrolls scholars, as himself, Thiede is clearly vastly irritated by all those who don't follow the party line. He is derisive about "those members of the Dead Sea Scroll fan club who want to prove pet theories". Although he acknowledges his "considerable contribu Thiede is a papyrologist who has done detailed work on the Scrolls. In this book he reiterates his earlier thesis that one fragment, no larger than a postage stamp, contains text from Mark's Gospel, arguing from this for the very an "unlikely and clearly unprovable hypothesis". But Thiede, in this book, accuses Vermes of "characteristic double standards". Such bickering is sadly typical of Scrolls scholars.
As a Scrolls scholar tions towards speeding up the publication of the scroll fragments", he is particularly dismissive of the controversial scholar Robert Eisenman, speaking of his "creative rewriting" and claiming that "Eisenman accumulates a stupendous amount of impossible theories". As for the well-known (and generally considered deplorable) delays in publication, "All those socalled scandals about 'hidden scrolls' were artificially created by outsiders like Robert Eisenrnan and their journalistic followers, such as Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh. There never was a Vatican conspiracy — or any other attempt at hiding sensitive material". He accepts that the process of publication was "slow and cumbersome", but he lays the blame on the fact that there were so few qualified scholars, and that they were hampered by political restrictions. This may indeed be the ease, but one wonders whether, as an insider, he shrugs off such critics just a little too easily.
TIHEDE ILLUSTRATES in great detail just how complex deciphering the Scrolls can be. He discusses the latest scientific aids to scroll analysis, including jet propulsion infra-red techniques, with their "remarkable results: in one case alone, some 900 new, ie previously illegible, words became visible in the Genesis Apocryphon". He himself has helped develop "a new application method of confocal scanning optical microscopy" which allows non-invasive 3D analysis of the manuscripts, whether the material is papyrus, leather, parchment or wood.
He also takes the opportunity to reveal some recent discoveries by other academics, some not yet published. It has been a puzzle for some time that, very near to the supposedly celibate ESSCDCS at Qumran, was a cemetery containing the bones of women and children. Last year it was established that the skeletons there are only 300 years old, and are directed towards Mecca and so belong to Muslim Bedouins. "And thus," says Thiede, "a highly controversial 'fact' of Qumran archaeology has disappeared overnight".
There is some interesting material in this book, but it is frequently buried under long and complex digressions, such as one that goes on for pages on whether or not God is mentioned in the book of Esther. Overall, the book is untidily organised, and it is often difficult to follow the thread of the author's argument. In that way, perhaps, it is rather like the Scrolls themselves.