Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit misleads public?

Now Public ^ | July 2, 2007 | Charles Gadda

[Charles Gadda]

The Los Angeles Times carried an interesting report last week, by Mike Boehm, on the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit taking place at the San Diego Natural History Museum.  They asked the curator, Dr. Risa Levitt Kohn, why the museum has carefully excluded all scholars who oppose the old, and increasingly contested, theory of Scroll origins from the lecture series accompanying the exhibit, and she came up with a good reply--"You don't want to confuse people with so many competing theories, so they walk away, saying, 'Well, nobody really knows anything!'"

I for one find that extremely convincing.  The last thing in the world we would want is for people to understand why there is more than one interpretation of the facts. After all, that would only confuse them, and in their confused state they might become depressed, or behave in an irrational manner. They might even start asking why the museum has not explained how it came about that an entire series of major scholars rejected the old theory over the past decade, not in favor of "so many competing theories," but in favor of one salient competing theory. Yes, we must protect people from the truth at all costs.  Besides, we wouldn't want to do anything that might upset Dr. Kohn's academic friends!

For a somewhat different perspective, see University of Chicago historian Norman Golb's article Fact and Fiction in Current Exhibitions of the Dead Sea Scrolls--A Critical Notebook for Viewers.  And see his editorial in The Forward, Take Claims about Dead Sea Scrolls with a Grain of Salt. 

A chronology of this controversy is now available on-line (that's another link). 

[Charles Gadda]

On the Now Public site, I've attached a beautiful photograph of the Copper Scroll that I downloaded from the Columbia University website.

[Always Right]

Science today is not about finding the correct answer, it is about confirming the poltically correct assumptions.

[Publius6961]

Ummmmm.
A brief summary of the controversy in understandable English would have been nice...

[Publius6961]

The controversy:

...the old theory, created in the infancy of Scroll scholarship, that these manuscripts were written in whole or at least in large part by a Jewish sect of Essenes supposedly living at a site — Khirbet Qumran — located in the Judaean Wilderness near the Dead Sea shore.

[The new conflicting theory] claims that the presently known accumulation of evidence, adduced by growing numbers of text scholars and archaeologists, demonstrating that the Scrolls are of Jerusalem origin, that Khirbet Qumran was a secular site with no connection to a religious sect, and that the Scrolls lack any [significant connection] to that [secular] site.

[Mr. Lucky]

Bless you.

[Old Student]

I’ve been interested in the Dead Sea Scrolls since I was a kid. I am not, however, invested in any particular theory as to how they got where they were. Let all the theories fight it out, and may the best theory win. And do it all over again, as each new bit of information comes to light!

[Charles Gadda]

Golb’s editorial in The Forward (linked in my piece above) summarizes the controversy in readable language.

[SunkenCiv]

This topic was posted 7/4/2007, thanks Charles Gadda.