Dead Sea Scrolls: Wisdom of the ancients is delivered to modern scholars

(Editor's Note: This story has been altered. When four of the Dead Sea Scrolls were put up for sale in 1954, it was the son of recently deceased Israeli scholar Eleazar Sukenik, Yigael Yadin, who fulfilled his father's decades-long struggle to return the scrolls to Israel. The original version of this story incorrectly said Sukenik purchased the scrolls.)

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View a gallery of some of the Dead Sea Scrolls and artifacts uncovered near them.

In a turbulent time more than half a century ago, when the international community was installing the new state of Israel into the Arab-dominated and already conflict-rich region of Palestine, three shepherds were tending herds at the northwestern edge of the Dead Sea.

Their Bedouin tribe, the Ta'amireh, had been doing this for centuries -- moving herds between Bethlehem and the Jordan River.

There isn't that much to do in the desert while tending goats and sheep. Khalil Musa, Jum'a Muhammad Khalil and their younger cousin, Muhammad Ahmed el-Hamed, often had time to spare, to joke around, sometimes do a little exploring. Perhaps they would talk of the many prophets, representing many religions, who found inspiration in this area.

But one winter evening in 1947, or perhaps it was 1946, since almost nothing in this story is without dispute, Jum'a discovered two small openings in the side of a rock face. He threw a rock into the smaller of the two holes and, surprisingly, heard what sounded like the dull crack of breaking pottery.

Jum'a called the other two over to the holes and told them what he had heard. Their interest was piqued, but night was falling and the flocks were in desperate need of water. They knew they had to keep moving. Two days would pass before the three men had time to return to further examine what kind of hidden treasure might be inside the cave.


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It was the youngest, Muhammad Ahmed, who was the first to return. Early in the morning, while his elders still slept, the teenager squeezed through the larger hole to enter the cave, located near the ancient ruins known as Qumran.

"As his eyes became accustomed to the dim light, he saw about 10 tall jars lining the wall of the cave," according to American scholar John Trever, who was one of the first to interview the Bedouin men, as documented in his book, "The Untold Story of Qumran."

When Muhammad returned to tell the others of his discovery, they became angry that he had gone to the cave without them -- likely, Trever reported, because they feared he might have hidden anything valuable. The teenager's nickname, after all, was "edh-Dhib," the wolf.

The three Bedouins returned to the cave and, after Muhammad squeezed in again, recovered anything they judged worth carrying. All but two of the jars, Trever said the shepherds told him, were empty. They found broken pottery all over the cave floor. The Bedouins eventually came away with two bundles wrapped in cloth, covering two parchment scrolls, and one leather scroll without a cover.

They had no idea what they had discovered.

Scrolls shake things up

Even today, it is still not easy to summarize with complete consensus what the Bedouins had stumbled upon.

Put most simply, we now know they had found the first few of what would turn out to be fragments and whole sections of text from many hundreds of ancient and sacred documents that have come to be known as the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Many of the scrolls, which date from about 250 B.C. to 68 A.D., are biblical manuscripts -- the oldest record of the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament of the Christian Bible. The previous oldest Bible manuscripts were the Masoretic texts, carefully preserved by a group of Jewish scholars called Masoretes, which date to about 900 A.D.

"Overnight, we have texts that are 1,000 years earlier," said Jack Levison, a New Testament professor at Seattle Pacific University.

The entire book of Isaiah and text from all but one other book, Esther, in the Hebrew Bible were found in the scrolls, which largely -- if not precisely -- confirmed the accuracy of later translations of the Bible.

The scrolls provided a window into a formative period of both Judaism and Christianity, "a time for which we had virtually no first-hand knowledge prior to the discovery," said scrolls scholar Martin Abegg Jr. of Trinity Western University in Langley, B.C.

"The scrolls shake us up a bit because they show that there were about three different versions of the Bible around in that time period," presenting a challenge to the concept of the immutable word of God, said Peter Flint, another expert on the scrolls at Trinity Western.

But perhaps what shook people up most -- and what continues to reverberate -- were the scrolls that nobody had anticipated finding.

Most of the Dead Sea Scrolls, some 670 of the nearly 900, are "non-biblical" documents that include commentary on the biblical texts and rules for living, providing a rich picture of Jewish thought and life at the time of Jesus Christ. Many experts believe they were written by the Essenes, an ancient sect that separated itself from the rabbinic Jews in Jerusalem.

This "non-biblical" differentiation of the scrolls, arguably, is a somewhat arbitrary distinction based on a modern bias. Scholars say it is clear that many of these "non-biblical" scrolls were regarded by those who held them 2,000 years ago as sacred texts, as scripture -- as part of the "Bible" of their day.

"There are different psalms attributed to David, tales about biblical figures not found in the modern Bible and even texts of known biblical figures talking in the first person," said Scott Noegel, a University of Washington expert on Near Eastern languages and literature.

"There is even one scroll, the Copper Scroll, that some believe to be a treasure map," Noegel said.

As more and more scrolls were discovered, the questions piled up like windblown sand: Who were the authors? Why were some of their documents incorporated into the modern Bible and some left out? And why, if some of these sacred texts were written during the time of Jesus, is there no mention of the birth of Christianity?

Or is there?

The scrolls and Christianity

Some scholars, albeit not in the majority, believe the scrolls do contain encoded descriptions of the early Christian community.

One of the first scholars to study the original scrolls, John Marco Allegro of Great Britain, argued this and later, in the 1970s, contended the ancient documents reveal that early Christianity was actually a fertility cult centered on the use of psilocybin, a hallucinogenic mushroom.

Along conspiratorial lines similar to those found in the popular -- and roundly debunked -- theological thriller "The Da Vinci Code," Allegro contended that the Catholic Church actively worked to suppress and denigrate his findings because they challenged the traditional views.

Most experts today, while acknowledging Allegro's early contributions to deciphering the scrolls, reject his interpretation.

At about the same time Allegro was arguing the case for the sacred mushrooms, Spanish scholar Jose O'Callaghan announced his finding that, while less bizarre than Allegro's, still caused a furor within the scroll community.

In 1972, O'Callaghan claimed to have proved that several of the Dead Sea Scrolls written in Greek clearly contain portions of New Testament books such as Mark, Acts, Romans, James and Peter. His argument, perhaps because it is based on a liberal interpretation of some very tiny scroll fragments, remains unpersuasive to most experts.

A mainstream scrolls scholar, Lawrence Schiffman of New York University, said "despite some misinformation, no New Testament materials were found at Qumran."

But there are connections.

Levison said the community at Qumran viewed itself as living in the end times, with the scroll of Isaiah pointing to a "messianic apocalypse" echoed in the New Testament.

Several of the signs the scroll attributes to the Messiah correspond with a section in the gospels of Matthew and Luke, where Jesus replies to a question of whether he is the Messiah: "Go back and report to John (the Baptist) what you have seen and heard: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor."

"Those are amazing details," Levison said. "It corresponds with the Dead Sea Scrolls."

But such textual similarities, most scholars say, should surprise nobody since the early Christians were a Jewish sect, albeit almost certainly a different one from the keepers of the scrolls. Each had split off from the mainstream. It is the interpretation of the scrolls -- what they mean and how they might impact modern religious thought -- that tends to provoke controversy.

"In this field, people argue about pretty much everything," said Bruce Zuckerman, a scroll expert at the University of Southern California. The Dead Sea Scrolls "show us that the text of the Bible around the time of Jesus was a lot more fluid than some people would like it to be," Zuckerman said.

Still, the discovery of the scrolls proved that today's Hebrew Bible is "basically the same" and thus did not alter Jewish beliefs, said Rabbi Salomon Cohen-Scali of Congregation Ezra Bessaroth in Seattle. "Everything that comes from Israel from that period, that reinforces our beliefs and convictions that this is accurate, will help us."

The scrolls attest to "the general reliability of the Hebrew text on which most modern translations have been made," agreed George Nickelsburg, professor emeritus of religion at the University of Iowa and an Issaquah resident.

At the same time, Nickelsburg said, the discovery indicates that in "the centuries before the turn of the era, Jews saw the texts of scripture as a dynamic entity whose wording could be tweaked here and there so that it spoke relevantly to new times and changing circumstances," he said.

But no matter which interpretation you agree with, whether you are Christian or Jewish or Muslim or someone who eschews any and all religion, Zuckerman said, the Dead Sea Scrolls have meaning for nearly anyone.

"It doesn't make any difference if you have never opened the Bible or you read it every day," he said. "The Bible still has an impact on your life. ... It has had a fundamental influence on all of Western civilization.

"If you want to understand the religious fault lines that govern so much of what happens in the modern world, it helps to excavate back to the ancient fault lines," Zuckerman said.

A tortuous journey

Back in 1947, after the three Bedouins had retrieved the scrolls from the cave near Qumran, they returned to their tribal camp southeast of Bethlehem. Unaware of the significance of their booty, they hung the scrolls on a tent pole. There, the documents suffered damage from the elements -- sacred words cast by the wind back into the desert.

The Bedouins eventually took the scrolls to several antiquities dealers, some who rejected them as worthless, before finding a cobbler who agreed to have them examined by someone from the Syrian Orthodox Church. He thought the language of the scrolls was "Syriac" -- an ancient language.

An archbishop in the church, Athanasius Samuel, examined them and, believing them to be authentic, agreed to buy them. These would later be identified as the "Isaiah Scroll," the "Manual of Discipline" and "Commentary on Habakkuk."

As this sale was being negotiated, the Bedouins returned to the cave and found four more scrolls that they later sold, along with some of the jars, to a different dealer. These eventually came to the attention of an archaeologist at Hebrew University, Eleazar Sukenik, whose son, Yigael Yadin, purchased two of them -- the "Thanksgiving Hymns" and the "War Scroll."

Despite the growing market for scrolls, the going price early on was a pittance -- often the equivalent of less than $25 a scroll, and sometimes less than $10.

The War Scroll, some of which will be displayed in Seattle, reads like a much more detailed description of the book of Revelations' battle of Armageddon. According to this scroll, "the so-called sons of light ... knew that Rome, and all the armies of darkness, would collapse before the magnificent angelic armies of God," Levison said.

As word spread of these strange old scrolls, Sukenik and Samuel soon learned of each other. At a meeting in February 1948, the Israeli archaeologist immediately recognized that the scrolls held by the Syrians were similar to those he had purchased from the dealer.

It is at this point that the American John Trever got involved. The Syrians asked Trever and other experts at the American School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem to evaluate the scrolls. The Americans agreed, assuming it would be merely a gesture. Surely, these scraps would turn out to be weatherworn recent documents of little value, or just plain forgeries.

But, of course, they were nothing of the kind. As more experts got involved, looking over photographs if not the actual scrolls, it became impossible to deny the stunning nature of the discovery.

By April 1948, the situation began to take on the flavor of another fictional scenario -- Hollywood's "Raiders of the Lost Ark." Though World War II had ended, the Middle East was still a dangerous place. The partitioning of Palestine led to continuing violent conflicts between Arabs and Jews.

Amid these conflicts, experts sought to secure the scrolls and re-examine the caves. The known scrolls were shuttled from place to place. Officials argued about who "owned" the ancient documents. Archaeological expeditions were launched. And the Bedouins, now aware of the scrolls' growing value, continued to do their own exploring of desert caves.

New caves and new manuscripts were discovered, bartered, sold and hoarded.

In one odd turn of events, the Syrian Archbishop Samuel moved to the United States and, in 1954, placed an ad in the Wall Street Journal offering to sell four Dead Sea Scrolls. Sukenik's son, Yadin, heard of this and, working with private philanthropists and, secretly, the Israeli government, bought the scrolls and returned them to Israel. The price: $250,000.

All told, 11 caves near the Dead Sea were discovered to contain many hundreds of fragments of scrolls. Debates continued as to the authenticity of the texts, but carbon-14 dating and other scientific analyses soon quieted all but the most stubborn skeptics.

The next problem was determining how to study the massive collection of ancient text. Controversy erupted immediately when the Jordanian government, which held most of the scrolls at the Palestine Archaeological Museum, prohibited any Jewish scholars from participating. John Allegro, who would later champion the sacred mushroom interpretation, was among the select few experts allowed in by the Jordanians.

In 1967, with the Six-Day War, the Israelis captured the Palestine Archaeological Museum and the scrolls. Jewish scholars were now allowed to join the select group governing access to the ancient documents.

Other than Allegro, most members of the Dead Sea Scrolls team had failed to make public much of the scrolls or even their research findings on the texts. Biblical scholars and archaeologists groused that the data was still being hoarded. Allegro, who at one point also went looking for the buried treasure mentioned in the Copper Scroll, was one of the few who tried to make the scrolls more publicly accessible.

This lack of public access, and publication, continued into the 1990s and spawned any number of conspiracy theories.

A turning point came when a Hebrew University scholar, Ben Zion Wacholder, and Abegg, then a graduate student at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, published "A Preliminary Edition of the Unpublished Dead Sea Scrolls."

The 1991 book revealed the unpublished work of other experts and also used computer technology to reconstruct some of the scrolls. Access to the scrolls expanded greatly in the 1990s and scholars continue to publish many works of interpretation and analysis.

Today, the once closely held Dead Sea Scrolls are available for everyone to examine, interpret or simply gaze at as a wonder of ancient history.

The legacy of the scrolls

The Dead Sea Scrolls caused re-examination of ancient texts, leading to about 100 minor revisions, such as a word substitution, and margin notes in English translations. As research continues, that total will likely triple or quadruple, Abegg said.

"Despite the fact that there are some variations in the texts from the Qumran, the content of the Bible and its wordings are virtually the same," Schiffman said. "Its eternal message remains the same throughout the ages."

The Dead Sea Scrolls also illuminate the centuries between the Old Testament and New Testament.

Before the scrolls were discovered, Nickelsburg said, Jews largely derived their history from the fourth century B.C. to the first century A.D. from the writings of the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus and the Jewish philosopher and exegete, Philo of Alexandria.

"The Qumran writings are contemporary witnesses to that history, composed by the people who were living it. In them modern Jews may find aspects of their heritage to embrace and eschew," he said.

The scrolls' many parallels with the New Testament show today's Christians that "the earliest Christianity was, in fact, a Jewish messianic movement, and a better appreciation of the specific ways in which the early church both incorporated and distanced itself from aspects of its Jewish heritage," Nickelsburg said

Put another way, Abegg said, "the scrolls allow us to see that Christianity is much more Jewish than we had allowed, and they show us a Judaism that was much more varied than we had previously known. As you can imagine, there has been a major rewriting of books to account for this perspective."

That's plenty to ponder for scholars and believers and even skeptics, anyone curious about the cache of writings hidden in pottery jars in caves for two millennia.

Viewers of the scrolls may gain "a sense that something is special here -- some treasure, some ancient wisdom," Abegg said. "It may change their lives. Who knows?"

P-I reporter Tom Paulson can be reached at 206-448-8318 or tompaulson@seattlepi.com. P-I reporter John Iwasaki can be reached at 206-448-8096 or johniwasaki@seattlepi.com.

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