Michael Baigent - The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception

Ultimately, however, the import of the Qumran texts resides in something more than their potential to embarrass the Church. The real import of the Qumran texts resides in what they have to reveal of the Holy Land, that soil which, for so many centuries, has voraciously soaked up so much human blood — blood shed in the name of conflicting gods or, to be more accurate, not very dissimilar versions of the same God. Perhaps the documents yet to be divulged may confront us a little more inescapably with the scale and pointlessness of our own madness — and shame us, thereby, at least by a degree or so, in the general direction of sanity. The Dead Sea Scrolls offer a new perspective on the three great religions born in the Middle East. The more one examines those religions, the more one will discern not how much they differ, but how much they overlap and have in common — how much they derive from essentially the same source — and the extent to which most of the quarrels between them, when not precipitated by simple misunderstanding, have stemmed less from spiritual values than from politics, from greed, from selfishness and the presumptuous arrogance of interpretation. Judaism, Christianity and Islam are all, at present, beset by a resurgent fundamentalism. One would like to believe – though this may be too much to hope for — that greater understanding of their common roots might help curb the prejudice, the bigotry, the intolerance and fanaticism to which fundamentalism is chronically prone.

17 January 1991

13 October 1991

Note

The full bibliographical details, when not cited here, are to be found in the Bibliography.

1. Eisenman, Maccabees, Zadokites, Christians and Qumran, p.xvi.

1. The true story of the discovery will probably never be known. All the various accounts differ in certain details. Arguments over the correct sequence of events continued into the 1960s. For the different accounts, see: Allegro, The Dead Sea Scrolls, pp.l7ff; Brownlee, ‘Muhammad Ed-Deeb’s own Story of his Scroll Discovery’, pp. 236ff; ‘Edh-Dheeb’s Story of his Scroll Discovery’, pp.483ff; ‘Some New Facts Concerning the Discovery of the Scrolls of 1Q’, pp.417ff; Harding, The Times, 9 August 1949, p. 5; Samuel, ‘The Purchase of the Jerusalem Scrolls’, pp.26ff; Treasure of Qumran, pp.l42ff; Trever, ‘When was Qumran Cave 1 Discovered?’, pp.l35ff; The Untold Story of Qumran, pp.25ff; Wilson, The Dead Sea Scrolls 1947-1969, pp.3ff.

2. See, for example, Brownlee, op. cit., p.486, and n.6; Allegro, op. cit., p.20.

3. Wilson, op. cit,, p.4.

4. Van der Ploeg, The Excavations at Qumran, pp. 9-13.

5. Interviews, Miles Copeland, 10 April and 1 May 1990. A search of CIA archives requested under the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act has failed to locate the photographs.

6. Interview, 21 May 1990.

7. Yadin, The Message of the Scrolls, pp. 15-24, quoting Sukenik’s private journal.

8. Ibid., p. 14.

9. Trever, The Untold Story of Qumran, p.85.

10. Time Magazine, 15 April 1957, p.39.

11. Allegro, op. cit., pp.38-9.

12. Ibid., p.41.

13. Pliny, Natural History, V, xv.

14. De Vaux, Archaeology and the Dead Sea Scrolls, pp. 134-5.

15. Reports of this survey can be found in the following: de Vaux, ‘Exploration de la region de Qumran’, pp. 540ff.; Reed, ‘The Qumran Caves Expedition of March 1952’, pp.8ff.

16. Ibid.

17. Allegro, The Treasure of the Copper Scroll, p.35.

18. Time Magazine, op. cit., p.38.

19. Yadin, op. cit., p.40.

20. Ibid., pp.41-52.

21. Sharon to Eisenman, 16 January 1990.

1. Pryce-Jones, ‘A New Chapter in the History of Christ?’, p.12ff.

2. Ibid., p. 14.

3. Ibid.

4. Pryce-Jones to authors, 11 January 1990.

5. Interview, Magen Broshi, 12 November 1989.

6. Interview, Frank Cross, 18 May 1990.

7. Private communication.

8. Interview, Abraham Biran, 4 December 1989.

9. Interview, James Robinson, 3 November 1989.

10. North, ‘Qumran and its Archaeology’, p. 429.

11. Interview, Norman Golb, 1 November 1989.

12. Interview, Shemaryahu Talmon, 8 November 1989.

13. Time Magazine, 14 August 1989, p.44.

14. BAR, May/June 1989, p. 57; September/October 1989, p. 20.

15. Interview, James Robinson, 3 November 1989.

16. See Robinson, ‘The Jung Codex: the Rise and Fall of a Monopoly’; see also Robinson, ‘Getting the Nag Hammadi Library into English’.

17. A total of three volumes of Discoveries in the Judaean Desert dealing with the Cave 4 fragments have been published to date. There remain, so far as the projected publication schedule is concerned, fifteen further volumes dealing with Cave 4 texts and one more of Cave 11.

18. New York Times, 26 June 1989, p. 84.

19. BAR, September/October 1985, p. 6.

20. Ibid., p.66. The magazine adds: ‘Obviously, the existence of this factor is controversial and disputed.’

21. Ibid., p.66.

22. New York Times, op. cit., pp.Bl, B4.

23. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 5 July 1989, p.A7.

24. Cross, The Ancient Library of Qumran, p.30.

25. Allegro, The Dead Sea Scrolls, p.50.

26. This letter and many following are to be found in the private correspondence file of John Allegro’s papers.

1. Wilson, The Dead Sea Scrolls 1947-1969, p. 77.

2. Ibid., pp.97-8.

3. Ibid., p.97.

4. Interview, Philip Davies, 10 October 1989.

5. There was, however, one ‘rash’ statement made by Wilson which, for the record, should be dismissed. De Vaux told Wilson a story of events during the Six Day War, when, according to Wilson’s report, the Israeli troops, upon entering the grounds of the Ecole Biblique on 6 June 1967, sat priests, two at a time, as hostages in the open courtyard. The threat was that they should be shot if any sniper fire should come from the buildings of the Ecole or the associated Monastery of St Stephen. See Wilson, op. cit., p.259. Interviews in Israel have indicated that this event did not take place but was a tale foisted upon Wilson by de Vaux. Wilson did not apparently check this statement with any Israeli sources.

6. Interview, Shemaryahu Talmon, 8 November 1989.

7. Given to the Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres on 26 May 1950. Reported in Le Monde, 28-9 May 1950, p.4.

8. Brownlee, ‘The Servant of the Lord in the Qumran Scrolls I’, p.9.

9. Allegro to Strugnell, in a letter undated but written between 14 and 31 December 1955.

10. Ibid.

11. Ibid.

12. New York Times, 5 February 1956, p.2.

13. Ibid.

14. The Times, 8 February 1956, p.8.

15. Allegro to de Vaux, 9 February 1956.

16. Allegro to de Vaux, 20 February 1956.

17. Ibid.

18. Allegro to de Vaux, 7 March 1956.

19. Ibid.

20. Allegro to Cross, 6 March 1956.

21. The Times, 16 March 1956, p. 11.

22. The Times, 20 March 1956, p. 13.

23. Ibid.

24. Allegro to Strugnell, 8 March 1957.

25. Smyth, ‘The Truth about the Dead Sea Scrolls’, p.33.

26. Ibid., p.34.

27. Allegro to Claus-Hunno Hunzinger, 23 April 1956.

28. Harding to Allegro, 28 May 1956.

29. The Times, 1 June 1956, p. 12.