Dead Sea Scrolls' "Authors" Never Existed

[melon]

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1885421,00.htm

Scholar Claims Dead Sea Scrolls 'Authors' Never Existed
By Tim McGirk / Jerusalem

Biblical scholars have long argued that the Dead Sea Scrolls were the work of an ascetic and celibate Jewish community known as the Essenes, which flourished in the 1st century A.D. in the scorching desert canyons near the Dead Sea. Now a prominent Israeli scholar, Rachel Elior, disputes that the Essenes ever existed at all — a claim that has shaken the bedrock of biblical scholarship.

Elior, who teaches Jewish mysticism at Jerusalem's Hebrew University, claims that the Essenes were a fabrication by the 1st century A.D. Jewish-Roman historian Flavius Josephus and that his faulty reporting was passed on as fact throughout the centuries. As Elior explains, the Essenes make no mention of themselves in the 900 scrolls found by a Bedouin shepherd in 1947 in the caves of Qumran, near the Dead Sea. "Sixty years of research have been wasted trying to find the Essenes in the scrolls," Elior tells TIME. "But they didn't exist. This is legend on a legend." (See pictures of 60 years of Israel.)

Elior contends that Josephus, a former Jewish priest who wrote his history while being held captive in Rome, "wanted to explain to the Romans that the Jews weren't all losers and traitors, that there were many exceptional Jews of religious devotion and heroism. You might say it was the first rebuttal to anti-Semitic literature." She adds, "He was probably inspired by the Spartans. For the Romans, the Spartans were the highest ideal of human behavior, and Josephus wanted to portray Jews who were like the Spartans in their ideals and high virtue." (See pictures of disputed artifiacts.)

Early descriptions of the Essenes by Greek and Roman historians has them numbering in the thousands, living communally ("The first kibbutz," jokes Elior) and forsaking sex — which goes against the Judaic exhortation to "go forth and multiply." Says Elior: "It doesn't make sense that you have thousands of people living against the Jewish law and there's no mention of them in any of the Jewish texts and sources of that period." (Read "Is This Jesus's Tomb?")

So who were the real authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls? Elior theorizes that the Essenes were really the renegade sons of Zadok, a priestly caste banished from the Temple of Jerusalem by intriguing Greek rulers in 2nd century B.C. When they left, they took the source of their wisdom — their scrolls — with them. "In Qumran, the remnants of a huge library were found," Elior says, with some of the early Hebrew texts dating back to the 2nd century B.C. Until the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the earliest known version of the Old Testament dated back to the 9th century A.D. "The scrolls attest to a biblical priestly heritage," says Elior, who speculates that the scrolls were hidden in Qumran for safekeeping. (See pictures of Jews and Muslims in the Holy Land.)

Elior's theory has landed like a bombshell in the cloistered world of biblical scholarship. James Charlesworth, director of the Dead Sea Scrolls project at Princeton Theological Seminary and an expert on Josephus, says it is not unusual that the word Essenes does not appear in the scrolls. "It's a foreign label," he tells TIME. "When they refer to themselves, it's as 'men of holiness' or 'sons of light.' " Charlesworth contends that at least eight scholars in antiquity refer to the Essenes. One proof of Essene authorship of the Dead Sea Scrolls, he says, is the large number of inkpots found by archaeologists at Qumran.

But Elior claims says these ancient historians, namely Philo and Pliny the Elder, either borrowed from each other or retailed second-hand stories as fact. "Pliny the Elder describes the Essenes as 'choosing the company of date palms' beside the Dead Sea. We know Pliny was a great reader, but he probably never visited Israel," she says.

Elior is braced for more criticism of her theory. "Usually my opponents have only read Josephus and the other classical references to the Essenes," she says. "They should read the Dead Sea Scrolls — all 39 volumes. The proof is there."

 

[diamond]

don't u hate it when a potentially interesting topic slip slides away?

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[yolland]

It's certainly a very interesting topic for anyone with particular interest in Jewish social and political history during late antiquity, though I don't know how likely it is to attract broader interest than that, since the precise authorship of the Dead Sea Scrolls (and precise identity of the 'Essenes') is of little general relevance to Judaism or Christianity per se. Contrary to what the article suggests, Elior's argument is not new; several other historians, most notably Lawrence Schiffman at NYU, have been making it for some 20 years now. In general, a difficulty faced by any of the various 'who-really-wrote-the-Scrolls' theories--at least, the ones which attempt to pin authorship on some group already 'known' to history--is that for every document within the Scrolls you can find which dovetails nicely with your theory, someone else can point to another which poses some rather major problems for it.

I'm a little puzzled by this sentence though, and am wondering if the reporter possibly garbled something here:

Elior theorizes that the Essenes were really the renegade sons of Zadok, a priestly caste banished from the Temple of Jerusalem by intriguing Greek rulers in 2nd century B.C.

'Sons of Zadok' would normally be taken as a reference to the Sadducees, since that's the most common etymology proposed for that sect's name; and again, indeed several scholars have argued that Sadducees were the true authors of the Scrolls. However, the Sadducees aren't known to have existed prior to Hasmonean rule, nor am I familiar with any notion that the "intriguing Greek rulers" (i.e. Seleucids) who preceded them ever "banished" the existing priestly line from the Temple--rather, the existing Oniad line was simply co-opted and Hellenized over time, and before the 2nd cen. BC at that.

(Also, if putting 'Authors' in quote marks was meant to be the editor's attempt to get that headline to make sense, I'm not sure it was fully successful... )