Dead Sea's Living Legacy
The Milwaukee Public Museum is now offering an unprecedented look at the Dead Sea Scrolls for Milwaukee area residents and visitors. The scrolls, written in the late Second Temple era (probably) by a Jewish sect called the Essenes (Tznuim), were found in caves near the Dead Sea in the late 1940's. The Essenes rejected the leadership of the Temple cohanim (priests), whom they considered corrupt and evil. They left Jerusalem and other Jewish cities to establish their own commune under the leadership of their Moreh Tzedek (Teacher of Righteousness).
The Display: The exhibit includes both actual scroll fragments and facsimiles, as well as coins and artifacts from the same time and place. Some of the scrolls are Biblical, others include the rules of governance of the Essenes commune. The actual scrolls are exhibited in a dark room with very low illumination, perhaps to avoid light damage to the materials. Each part of the exhibit is accompanied by an explanatory sign.
For documents that are about 2,000 years old (verified by carbon-14 dating), the actual scrolls are remarkably legible. Although the calligraphy is somewhat different from modern Hebrew, anyone who knows Hebrew will be able to read at least some of the words. If you want to read the facsimile Isaiah Scroll (the most complete of those found), bring a Hebrew text of the Book of Isaiah, so that you can match the words of the Scroll to their equivalents in modern lettering.
Religious Significance: Comparing the Dead Sea Scrolls with corresponding Hebrew Bible (Tanach) texts used today reveals only a few minor differences. (1) This means that the writings held sacred by Jews now are essentially the same as those revered by those who lived while the Temple in Jerusalem yet stood. Although the destruction of this Temple by the Romans in 70 CE ended the practice of animal sacrifice, the core of Jewish belief and practice has survived intact during two thousand years of exile and persecution.
Of the religions widely practiced in the Middle East at the time the scrolls were written (Roman, Egyptian, Greek, etc.), only Judaism lives today. Although Jesus and his first followers were contemporaries of the scribes who wrote the latest of the Dead Sea Scrolls, neither he nor Christianity are mentioned in any of them. (The exhibit does contain some Christian writing and artifacts from subsequent centuries).
Islam, which arose in Mecca nearly six hundred years after the era of the Dead Sea Scrolls, is mentioned in the exhibit only in noting that the mosque, the Muslim house of prayer, was modeled on the Jewish synagogue.
Political Significance: This exhibit, like the scrolls themselves, are a reminder that the Jewish people had a thriving society in the land between the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea some two thousand years ago. When the scrolls were composed, it was a large Jewish population living under Roman military occupation. Those who speak of "Arab East Jerusalem" or the "Arab West Bank" need only visit this exhibit to be reminded that the Arabs moved in only after most of the Jews were driven out.
Ironically, the explanatory signs refer to the land where the scrolls were composed as "Palestine" several times, even though the land was known as that time as "Judaea". (The Romans renamed the land "Syria Palestina" many years later after the Philistines, who had inhabited the coastal area .)
It is significant that the cave where the scrolls were first found by Arab goat-herders is near Qumran, in the West Bank. This is a reminder that Jews lived in the West Bank before 1967.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(1) The Dead Sea Scrolls by Millar Burrows (Viking, NY, 1955), page 303.
The Display: The exhibit includes both actual scroll fragments and facsimiles, as well as coins and artifacts from the same time and place. Some of the scrolls are Biblical, others include the rules of governance of the Essenes commune. The actual scrolls are exhibited in a dark room with very low illumination, perhaps to avoid light damage to the materials. Each part of the exhibit is accompanied by an explanatory sign.
For documents that are about 2,000 years old (verified by carbon-14 dating), the actual scrolls are remarkably legible. Although the calligraphy is somewhat different from modern Hebrew, anyone who knows Hebrew will be able to read at least some of the words. If you want to read the facsimile Isaiah Scroll (the most complete of those found), bring a Hebrew text of the Book of Isaiah, so that you can match the words of the Scroll to their equivalents in modern lettering.
Religious Significance: Comparing the Dead Sea Scrolls with corresponding Hebrew Bible (Tanach) texts used today reveals only a few minor differences. (1) This means that the writings held sacred by Jews now are essentially the same as those revered by those who lived while the Temple in Jerusalem yet stood. Although the destruction of this Temple by the Romans in 70 CE ended the practice of animal sacrifice, the core of Jewish belief and practice has survived intact during two thousand years of exile and persecution.
Of the religions widely practiced in the Middle East at the time the scrolls were written (Roman, Egyptian, Greek, etc.), only Judaism lives today. Although Jesus and his first followers were contemporaries of the scribes who wrote the latest of the Dead Sea Scrolls, neither he nor Christianity are mentioned in any of them. (The exhibit does contain some Christian writing and artifacts from subsequent centuries).
Islam, which arose in Mecca nearly six hundred years after the era of the Dead Sea Scrolls, is mentioned in the exhibit only in noting that the mosque, the Muslim house of prayer, was modeled on the Jewish synagogue.
Political Significance: This exhibit, like the scrolls themselves, are a reminder that the Jewish people had a thriving society in the land between the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea some two thousand years ago. When the scrolls were composed, it was a large Jewish population living under Roman military occupation. Those who speak of "Arab East Jerusalem" or the "Arab West Bank" need only visit this exhibit to be reminded that the Arabs moved in only after most of the Jews were driven out.
Ironically, the explanatory signs refer to the land where the scrolls were composed as "Palestine" several times, even though the land was known as that time as "Judaea". (The Romans renamed the land "Syria Palestina" many years later after the Philistines, who had inhabited the coastal area .)
It is significant that the cave where the scrolls were first found by Arab goat-herders is near Qumran, in the West Bank. This is a reminder that Jews lived in the West Bank before 1967.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(1) The Dead Sea Scrolls by Millar Burrows (Viking, NY, 1955), page 303.
Labels: Dead Sea Scrolls
posted by Gerald S Glazer at 9:26 AM
3 Comments:
Excellent!!!!!!!!!
One other fact is that the few minor differences found between the scrolls and modern texts of the Jewish Bible (T'Nach: Torah, Prophets, and Writings), are differences in spellings of names and not in content, message or meanings.
Thus the modern texts are virtually identical to the Dead Sea Scrolls. It should be understood that there is a very good reason for the amazing concordance between texts 2000 years apart and 1000 years earlier than ther previously known oldest Jewish Bible, and that is the Scribes.
One of the most revered and important skills and jobs of the Jewish religion were the Scribes whose main purpose was to faithfully and exactly transcribe the text so that it would not change through time and obviously they did a great job.
I saw the exhibit in Toronto at the Royal Ontario Museum. The exhibit itself is extremely well done, though the scroll fragments themselves were nearly illegible in the low light of the display room.
The exihibit at the ROM included other artifacts from the same time period, many of which I had seen in Israel at the Tower of David Museum. Most impressive among these are the Bet HaTokkin stone, belived to have been part of the parapet near top of the Beit HaMikdash, the Holy Temple of Jerusalem. .
The Toronto exhibit was not the same as the Milwaukee exhibit. They did not include the same material. The Milwaukee exhibit is unique and is not part of a traveling exhibit.
Post a Comment
<< Home