It
took 43 years since the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls from
1947-1952 until they were finally made public in 1991-1995. Most are
now housed in Israel Museum's Shrine of the Book constructed in 1965
and the Jordan Museum in 2011. Since 2011 there is an online site:
The Digital Dead Sea Scrolls, but this is not a complete set. Many pesher fragments have not been scanned!! As to the important Habakkuk
Scroll, it does not contain a translation as the
translations have been deemed copyrightable, which is a travesty to
world knowledge. Ultimately the general public may have heard of the
copy of Isaiah in a huge scroll, but are in the dark on those
original works of pesharim and their importance to Christianity.
As
has been true from the days of Galileo, anyone who dares to suggest
that Church doctrine is false has been ridiculed and suppressed. The scholars and the Christian fundamentalists have fought tirelessly against two of the most important innovative scholars, John Allegro and Barbara Thiering, just because they suggested that the pesharim of the Dead Sea
Scrolls might have inspired the writers of the Gospels.
You
see the writers of the DSS took passages from the Bible and
interpreted them as prophesies that related to their present time.
They believed that their time was special because prophets like
Daniel predicted that God would intervene of the side of Israel to
bring His kingdom to earth and displace all the pagan kings with
their king, a descendant of David. Even the descendant of David was
contested between Jesus, the first born, but conceived in a slight
violation to Essene rules, and James, the second son, also of Mary
and Joseph.
These two scholars Allegro and Thiering began to look at the
inconsistencies of the Gospels and came to the conclusion that they
must have been written in a way that would lend itself to pesher
interpretation. If the Old Testament contained messages that could be
deciphered, then the writers of the Gospels would have written the
New Testament in the same way. The obvious symbology of Revelation
that is nearly undecipherable also lends credence to this theory.
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John
Allegro was one of the initial people working on deciphering the Dead
Sea Scrolls and was the first to decipher the Copper Scroll in 1956.
With his very scholarly, difficult to understand words and sentences
which I have extracted, he makes these observations in his talk
Jesus and Qumran – The Dead Sea Scrolls, April 19, 1985
There
are quite a few similarities to the Essenes and Therapeuts in the
stories of Jesus being "a gentle rabbi, friend of little
children, Roman tax-collectors, and ladies with gynecological
problems" who was able to heal by "secret passwords and
sayings."
We
tend to dismiss the "verbal puns and nicknames in the Gospel
narratives as examples of the trivial banter to be expected among
friends and we have been too ready to shrug off the grammatical
mistakes as mere
faults in transmission by linguistically incompetent scribes.
However, once we begin to treat those 'onion skins' more seriously,
we shall begin to recognize beneath their surface other meaningful
concepts, and to find their source in key biblical texts whose manner
of interpretation is now explicable in terms
of
the Essene pesharim."
"In
the sectarian rules of conduct (in the Dead Sea Scrolls) we can see
clear patterns for the organizational structure
and
discipline of the early Christian communities, like the institution
of the presbytery and bishopric, disciplinary procedures,
standards
of communal behavior, methods of joint funding, attitudes to women
and sex, the theological basis for the practice
of
spiritual healing, and so on."
**************************
Barbara
Thiering made similar statements in her book Jesus the Man (Jesus and
the Riddle of the Dead Sea Scrolls) published in 1992 after the BBC
film with a similar title in 1990. Her thoughts on the subject can be
found on the web site which I built for her. These are quotes are from Explaining Miracles from her Pesher Technique website.
"The
major part of the space in all gospels is taken up with accounts of
miracles. Some are healing miracles, which can perhaps be accepted if
you believe in the mental source of much illness. But can it go so
far that a word from a man at a distance can bring about healing, as
in John 4: 48-52? And is it really possible to raise people from the
dead, as in the case of Lazarus (John 11: 1-46), Jairus' daughter
(Mark 5: 21-43), the son of the widow of Nain (Luke 7:11-17); or, in
Acts, Dorcas (Acts 9:36-43) and Eutychus (Acts 20:7-12)?"
"Does
it not reduce respect for Jesus, even in the ancient world, to give
space to nature miracles, such as walking on water (John 6:16-21)),
stilling a storm (Mark 4:35-41), withering a fig-tree with a word for
a capricious reason (Mark 11:12-14), feeding 5000 people with 5
loaves and 2 fish (John 6:1-14), sending demons into 2000 pigs and
causing their destruction (Mark 5:1-20)? Where is there reference to
these actions in other parts of the New Testament, as proofs of his
divine power?"
"We
avert our eyes from these stories now, having learned to dismiss them
as part of the beliefs of that ancient dreamtime in which we think
Christianity arose. Biblical critics in the 19th century did their
best, offering parallels from the Old Testament about the way such
legends could arise and be preserved in oral tradition. It was
essential to their case that there must be as long a gap as possible
between the time of Jesus and the setting down of these legends in
the gospels, so they dated the gospels late in the century."
"But
the Dead Sea Scrolls no longer allow us to think of the period of
Christian origins as a kind of dreamtime, one that relied on oral
tradition. We are dealing with intellectually sophisticated people
studying the best science of their day in ascetic schools, with full
writing facilities."
"These
were clues leading me to what at first was a hypothesis. Supposing a
group holding the Qumran definition of a two-level scripture set out
to write a new scripture, would they not be obliged, on their own
definition, to construct their new scripture in two levels? Supposing
also that they had a history that they wanted to preserve, yet
confine to an inner elite group, would not the pesher theory of
scripture serve them very well? Their ordinary members would benefit
from the surface meanings concerning morality, while the inner group
would discover actual historical events concerning their
institution."
***************************
And
as I have said at the beginning of the blog, the attacks have almost
succeeded into negating these two pioneers in true Biblical
scholarship and placing them in the realm of the misguided and crazy. This is, of
course, from the fear that, if they were right. Perhaps Christianity was just a follow-on from the Essenes and Therapeuts and
not unique, but most importantly it might be that Jesus was not the Son of God and the redeeming Christ who died on the cross. Maybe Jesus was just an inspired person, who was there
at the right time, to fill in for John the Baptist when he was
beheaded.
To discredit Allegro and Thiering, many have even attacked the original assumption that Qumran, located near the Dead Sea Scrolls, was an Essene monastery, even though the
comments of Josephus and Philo show that it must have been.
Having
lumped all the scrolls into a timeframe of the 2nd to 1st century
BCE by carbon dating, many have ignored the fact that, for instance
the Habakkuk fragment can just squeak into 2CE, and allowing for the
frugality of the Essenes, might have written 30 years later on 30
year old paper.
Using
this 2nd to 1st century BCE they have concocted theories on the
'Wicked Priest' and the 'Teacher of Righteousness' contained in the
pesher commentary fragments as being Jonathan Maccabeus (161-143 BCE)
and some unnamed priest, and yet a far better theory is that the
Teacher of Righteousness is John the Baptist.
They have attacked John Allegro as a druggy since he published a book called
'The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross' and Barbara Thiering for her proofs that Jesus was illegitimate and that he was married twice. No one can be 100% perfect, but the fact still
remains that scholars and religious fanatics may shut their eyes, but
the truth is there for all to see.
The Dead Sea Scrolls are not dead
yet. The solution to the meaning of the Gospels is 'out there.'
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