Dead Sea Scrolls Finally Published

NEW YORK -- The Dead Sea Scrolls, dating between 250 B.C. and A.D. 70, have nearly all been published 54 years after their discovery in caves on the western shore of the Dead Sea.

The announcement of their publication was scheduled for Thursday at the New York Public Library by Emmanuel Tov, a professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and the project's editor in chief.

Ah - stupid Catholic bashing from jedi on FR - how new and exciting.

If you knew the first thing about the DSS, you would know that the Hebrew University of Jerusalem had complete photographic reproductions of the entire corpus of documents.

What happened is that lots of outsiders with ideological axes to grind (Catholic-bashers, antiSemites, atheists) accused the team of scholars involved of foot-dragging, infighting and conspiracy. The scholars came from both Catholic, Jewish and Reformation backgrounds. They were all consummate professionals.

Why did it take so long? The scrolls were not like printed books, with vowels and publication dates and cataloguing information and page numbers and regular spelling/grammar. They were a random collection of scrolls and scraps. They were jumbled together in no particular order. They were scattered over a number of archeological sites. They were written in various scripts. They were written over a period of hundreds of years by many different hands. They were not punctuated nor were they spelled or constructed uniformly. They were written in different dialects. Some texts were written in several different dialects using different alphabets.

These were, far and away, the most complex set of documents ever discovered in the history of archaeology. It took more than a century to begin to decipher Tokharian. It took five centuries to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphics. That it only took 54 years to decipher, edit, redact and publish the DSS is remarkable, and a testament to the skill and hard work of the scholars involved. Jedi, you couldn't dream of attaining the scholarship needed to assess these documents - those of us with training in ancient Semitics know just how ignorant your comments sound.

What about the Isaiah 53 scroll which proves that Jesus is and was the 'suffering savior, the fulfillment of the passover lamb? This is the passage that the ancient rabbis deliberately deleted from their scriptures as an attempt to invalidate the claims of Jews who formed the nucleus of those who had 'eyes to see and ears to hear'.

Nonsense. No Jewish Bible ever deleted Isaiah 53. The Isaiah scroll was one of the first of the Dead Sea Scrolls to be released, and it includes ch. 53, as does every other Jewish manuscript of Isaiah. Jews differ from Christians in their interpretation of Is. 53-- we Jews see the "suffering servant" as the people of Israel, not as the messiah-- but to claim that rabbis deleted a chapter from the Bible is absolutely untrue. I'd like to see the source for this bit of "information."

“These were, far and away, the most complex set of documents ever discovered in the history of archaeology. It took more than a century to begin to decipher Tokharian. It took five centuries to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphics. That it only took 54 years to decipher, edit, redact and publish the DSS is remarkable, and a testament to the skill and hard work of the scholars involved. Jedi, you couldn’t dream of attaining the scholarship needed to assess these documents - those of us with training in ancient Semitics know just how ignorant your comments sound. “

Balderdash. The Scrolls were photographed in their entirety within a matter of years of their discovery. You’d think they would have WANTED the world’s biblical scholars to have access to them ASAP in order to help with the assembly, translations, implications. This is like the U. of East Anglia refusing FOIA requests for its raw data on global warming. Biblical scholars were demanding release of the Scrolls to the point that a set of microfiches were STOLEN from their files about ten years ago and made available to scholars. A 60 year delay in this matter, 3 generations!, over a find of this magnitude is unheard of in academia and unjustifiable by any interpretation of the events. It’s like Carter sitting on the contents of Tut’s tomb for 3 generations. This work was suppressed plain and simple.

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Thanks 11th Earl of Mar. Note: this topic is dated 11/16/2001. Just adding to the catalog, not sending a general distribution. To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list.