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March 11, 2005
Ancient legacy of Qumeran
Dead Sea Scrolls writers believed in "magic," Hebrew
U scholar says.
MATT BELLAN JEWISH POST AND NEWS
When Esther Chazon tells people that she does research on the Dead
Sea Scrolls, their eyes light up. "Why is it that the Dead
Sea Scrolls are so magical?" Chazon, one of the world's leading
scholars on the scrolls asked, rhetorically.
Chazon was speaking to an audience of about 200 Jewish and non-Jewish
Winnipeggers at the Berney Theatre Feb. 9. The hour-long, free lecture
was presented by the Winnipeg chapter of Canadian Friends of the
Hebrew University (CFHU). Director of the Hebrew University's Orion
Centre for the Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Associated Literature,
Chazon told her listeners that the scrolls are "magical"
for three reasons:
"The first has to do with the mysterious circumstances that
surrounded the publication of the Dead Sea Scrolls; the second has
to do with the importance of the scrolls for understanding Jesus
and the beginning of Christianity; the third is that this is indeed,
the greatest archeological manuscript find of the 20th century."
Chazon, also a senior lecturer in the department of Hebrew literature
at the Hebrew University, has a PhD and has also done postdoctoral
work on the Second Temple and the scrolls.
Accidental discovery
Recounting the discovery of the first of the scrolls in 1947 by
a "little Bedouin boy," Chazon said he was tending his
flock on the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea, when he lost a
sheep and went looking for it.
"He threw a stone into Cave One, heard pottery crashing, went
in and found seven scrolls."
The boy brought them to an antiquities dealer in Bethlehem, and
a Hebrew University professor announced confirmation of their authenticity
that November – the day of the United Nations vote on the partition
of Palestine. But then came Israel's War of Independence. The Qumeran
caves and others in that stretch of the Dead Sea, where all the
scrolls were eventually found, along with East Jerusalem, including
the Hebrew University site on Mt. Scopus, ended up in Jordanian
hands.
"We lost all the material that was found at Qumeran and also
the site," Chazon said.
An eight-member team of Christian archeologists, all clergymen representing
various "dynastic orders," and headed by a Dominican monk,
took over.
They imposed Christian interpretations on the seven scrolls that
had been discovered and deciphered.
"You heard Qumeran described as an Essene monastery,"
said Chazon. The clergymen referred to the "common dining room"
that writers of the scrolls used as a "refectory." This
team also held a very tight lock on the scrolls, and on interpreting
them, said Chazon.
Then, with the Six Day War of 1967, Qumeran, East Jerusalem and
the scrolls fell into Israeli hands. The Israeli government allowed
the Christian team to continue its research. In the mid- to late-1980s,
the government came under a lot of pressure to release the scrolls.
"Bootlegged versions" came out, and there were legal battles.
With the Gulf War of 1991, negatives of the scrolls were deposited
for safekeeping in a number of libraries around the world. The team
researching and looking for more scrolls was expanded from eight
to "nearly 100," said Chazon, including women and Jews,
and a Hebrew University professor was appointed editor-in-chief.
"That tremendously speeded up publication – 30 new volumes
(deciphering and translating the scrolls) from 1991 to 2001, compared
to just seven in the 35 years before."
"Today, we speak of 1,500 texts found along the shores of the
Dead Sea – 930 from the caves of Qumeran," Chazon said.
What have the researchers found? Hundreds of biblical texts –
all books of the Bible, except the Book of Esther, many works of
biblical interpretation, books of Jewish law, the rules that governed
the community that wrote the scrolls, works that dealt with Jewish
mysticism – "any field of thought in the field of Judaism
is represented by the Dead Sea Scrolls," Chazon explained.
Opposed to the priests
Who were the authors of the scrolls, inscribed from about 50 BCE
until about 50 CE?
The first writers were a "political religious group" opposed
to the Hasmonean High Priests who rededicated the Temple in Jerusalem
in 164 BCE after the Hasmonean revolt against Syrian rule. The Hasmoneans
"usurped" the high priesthood from the priestly tsaddakites.
Some tsaddakites made peace with the Hasmoneans and stayed in power.
Others objected to changes the Hasmoneans had introduced and headed
toward the Dead Sea.
"They set up their own community, and conceived it as a spiritual
temple they called the house of holiness," said Chazon.
This new community at Qumeran built living quarters, including ritual
baths and a common dining room, which has now been excavated. They
also set up rules "dictating how purity had to be kept in their
community – within their spiritual temple and impurity [kept]
outside," and conducted initiation rites for incoming members.
This Qumeran community, which called itself yachad –
Hebrew for "together" – lasted several generations.
Members had "nightly study meetings" and, besides the
biblical and other material they recorded, they developed complex
rites and prayers, to "keep the boundaries very tight, between
the impure outside – the Sons of Darkness – and members
of the community – the Sons of Light." Those sons of light
and darkness weren't only human, but supernatural. Chazon described
many of the rites and prayers this cult developed as "magical"
– not in the Walt Disney sense, but in the sense of "keeping
out" impure, evil, darker forces.
"The division between light and darkness, truth and untruth,
pure and impure, is exactly the world of magic."
As members of her audience followed her, reading handouts, Chazon
led them in a close study of several excerpts from the Dead Sea
Scrolls that serve as examples of that "magic." They included
incantations urging God and the angels of light to help them.
They created horoscopes to discover the divine will, looking at
the weather and other means to discern the heavenly signs and discover
what we, as humans, are supposed to do. They cast heavenly spells
against demons. And they wrote protective songs and prayers addressed
to God in warding off demons.
Chazon also drew parallels between the "magic" prayers
and rites this yachad community used and recorded, and Jewish mystical
writing in medieval times and later – an "unbroken link"
in Jewish religious practices, through to modern times. During a
question-and-answer session, asked whether the scrolls have yielded
any evidence of early Christianity, she answered with a firm no.
The last of the scrolls were written in about 50 CE. Then there
were about two generations before John the Baptist, the first of
the writers of the Gospels, refers to Jesus.
"Therefore none of these documents are Christian documents,"
Chazon explained. "But they give us a lot of information about
beliefs and practices in Judea at the time of Jesus. They shed a
lot of light on beliefs and practices thought [previously] to be
distinctively Christian that were practices of certain sects of
the Jewish population in Judea during this time."
Chazon was on a speaking tour and visited Winnipeg after a stop
at Temple Sholom in Vancouver Feb. 6 that was sponsored by the Vancouver
chapter of CFHU.
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