Dead Sea scrolls study raises new questions over texts' origins

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/sep/06/dead-sea-scrolls-study-questions-origins

by diodorus • 7 years ago

124 48 7 years ago

theguardian.com

emmelaich2• 7 years ago

It's now not far-fetched to believe they're fake.

thefounder2• 7 years ago

Depends what fake means to you

jacobush• 7 years ago

Alternative fakes?! :-)

TallGuyShort2• 7 years ago

I don't believe any of the scrolls that overlap with biblical canon are believed to be originals, so what do you mean by fake? It sounds like you just want to take a jab at them because they're of religious significance, which is just as irrational as religious people who don't like scientific theories they don't even understand because they feel it's an enemy to their rrligion.

CelestialTeapot• 7 years ago

"I don't believe any of the scrolls that overlap with biblical canon are believed to be originals, so what do you mean by fake?"

That's true of any bible text we have. The original texts are lost, hence biblical exegesis and hermeneutics exist as disciplines. And which "canon" are you talking about? The 5th century canon before the East-West schism of the Eastern Orthodox-Catholic church? The 16th century canons of the Roman Catholic or the Church of England? There are a lot of canons out there.

TallGuyShort2• 7 years ago

@CelestialTeapot - that's my point - this is like claiming someone's Bible is fake. Well... fake like it's not true? Because that's irrelevant to this evidence. Fake like it's an unlicensed forgery or something?

emmelaich2• 7 years ago

On the contrary I'd like them to be genuine.

By fake I mean made to look older than they are; and possibly planted in the caves.

And note I said "not far-fetched"; not likely, just less improbable than previously.

tomohawk• 7 years ago

Click bait title

mrob• 7 years ago

I'll call out click-bait when I see it, but I don't see it here. "Dead Sea scrolls study finds salts used in construction are not common to region" is not particularly meaningful to non-archaeologists. I think the important point is the increased mystery, and "raises new questions" is a reasonable way to phrase it.

baud147258• 7 years ago

"Dead Sea scrolls study finds salts used in construction are not common to region"

I think it gives more information, since it tells what has been discovered, even non-archaeologists can understand what it's about. And "raises new questions" can easily be added.

sp332• 7 years ago

The headline makes people wonder if they are fake.

gus_massa• 7 years ago

I actually like your version of the title better :).

This is a technical forum, and people is expected to understand this and understand that if the salt is uncommon there is something unexpected. [I didn't know that is was common to cover the parchment with salts, but it's not so hard to understand the relation anyway. IANAA]

And it's almost the subtitle:

Dead Sea scrolls study raises new questions over texts' origins
Salts used on Temple scroll are not common to Dead Sea region, researchers find

Perhaps the mods will agree to change it.

IlegCowcat• 7 years ago

Have they released all the scrolls yet?

2rsf• 7 years ago

The ones in the title ? I'm not sure but you can browse most of the originals in:

https://www.deadseascrolls.org.il/explore-the-archive

and some with translations in:

http://dss.collections.imj.org.il/

ilimilku6• 7 years ago

Yes, the scrolls have been published in their entirety in the series Discoveries in the Judaean Desert numbering some 40 volumes. These are the official "first editions". There are numerous other collections of a non-critical nature as well as translations. A simple search should yield the relevant results.

INTPenis• 7 years ago

Doesn't really mean anything if the materials aren't local to the region. People in bronze age scandinavia were trading for copper with the mediterranean so there was a "global" trade network already in place.

posterboy• 7 years ago

while I don't doubt trade was a thing then, isn't your comparison an anachronism, like BC vs AD?

ilimilku6• 7 years ago

It has to do with the scholarly consensus of the local, i.e. Khirbet Qumran, origin of the scrolls, namely that they were produced at that settlement. Contrary views say that they scrolls were principally produced in or around Jerusalem and brought to Qumran during the Roman invasion of CE 70.

BurningFrog• 7 years ago

People in bronze age scandinavia were trading for copper with the mediterranean

Sorry to make a minor point, but while the goods scandinavian and mediterranean goods travelled that far, doesn't mean the people did.

Perhaps more likely, each was traded a dozen times with someone 50km away, and the goods reached people the manufacturer had no idea existed.

tabtab• 7 years ago

Re: more likely, each was traded a dozen times...the goods reached people the manufacturer had no idea existed.

Some things never change: https://www.steelavailable.com/en/counterfeit-steel-big-worr...

Retric• 7 years ago

Transaction costs limit how many people are in these chains. It’s far more common for individual merchants to be paying taxes to several groups vs large numbers of groups being involved in the trading.

dredmorbius• 7 years ago

Given that goods typically moved by water (far less energy than overland), possibilities of longer voyages are somewhat more credible.

I don't know the actual history / archaeology, or quantities involved.

Europe does have a remarkably good inland navigable river network.

There's mention here that Scandinavians raided Mediterranian coastal towns and villages:

https://www.realmofhistory.com/2016/05/17/cypriot-copper-axe...

This map suggests a possible eastern route (the accompanying web page makes no mention of Sweden, scandinavia, or the Baltics):

http://theancientneareast.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Tra...

(from: http://theancientneareast.com/the-bronze-age-world-system/)

Travel along the Donau, Dneiper, or Don rivers could have reached the Black Sea:

https://www.worldatlas.com/webimage/countrys/euriv.gif

This article and map suggest sea routes, through the Straits of Gibraltar:

https://www.speroforum.com/a/ROURBRXIJL49/77965-Ancient-trad...

dr_dshiv2• 7 years ago

This sent me down a little rabbit hole. I love the history of this time. Shwep.org is a great, great source of inspiration and history.

I just got this Kindle book to satisfy my dead sea scroll interpretations, even though the author is a bit antiauthoritarian! He apparently had a direct influence on the public release of the scrolls.

"Breaking the Dead Sea Scrolls Monopoly: A New Interpretation of the Messianic Movement in Palestine"

dayofthedaleks• 7 years ago

'Shwep.org'

Is this a typo? Domain does not appear to exist.

philk10• 7 years ago

Guessing it's https://shwep.net/

ilimilku6• 7 years ago

The "big picture" background here is that the scholarly consensus, established prematurely before all but the scrolls in the 1st cave were found, was that they belonged to an Essene "monastic" settlement at the ruins of Khirbet Qumran nearby. This has been challenged in a number of ways, yet the consensus of the local, Essene origin remains in tact. A Jerusalem origin hypothesis was developed principally by Norman Golb and advanced by a few others, yet the history of Scrolls scholarship has proven to be nasty to say the least. This new evidence, while saying little in the grand scheme, does possibly hint at a non-Dead Sea, i.e. Jerusalem origin of the scrolls.

wl• 7 years ago

Specifically, one of the more likely theories is that a good number of these scrolls were deposited in the desert by various religious communities for safe keeping before the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE.

ilimilku6• 7 years ago

Yes, there was one article published a number of years ago (the author's name escapes me), who did a good job of parsing out the various communities that could have been responsible for certain caves, priests, Zealots, etc. I'm not sure it got much traction, but I found the exercise intriguing.

mrpara• 7 years ago

Not a historian so I may be missing something, but how would one possibly differentiate between the origin being the Dead Sea or Jerusalem based on things like materials used? I mean, Jerusalem and the Dead Sea are less than 35km apart (according to google). Even thousands of years ago, it would have been a non-issue to transport materials or techniques between these two locations. I can't imagine that our knowledge of scroll-making at the time is so specific that we could possibly rule out a craftsman taking a camel from one location to another.

JoeAltmaier• 7 years ago

Agreed. An ancient document storage pit was found (in Iraq?) which was the records of a merchant over several generations. It included trading records from many surrounding settlements. From the time of Hammurabi.

duxup• 7 years ago

Yeah the scale of trade always seems to surprise everyone. It's hard for me often to understand how folks draw the archaeological lines here.

Materials could have been traded and the scrolls written near the Dead Sea ... or even folks from the Dead Sea traveled to Jerusalem, used local materials and made some scrolls, and traveled back.

ilimilku6• 7 years ago

It's a good point, and the distinction is not one that most historians would deal with being more scientific in nature. However, in the long and heated debate about the scrolls' origins, scientific analysis of the scroll and jars has been offered.

lurquer• 7 years ago

Couple hours on a horse one way. I'm sure there were people who made the trip (and back) daily.

But, researchers have to find something to research or they're out of a job.

cik• 7 years ago

I went on an archeological dig in the area in June (as a tourist) and can answer part of this. Part of the answer is writing materials; in Jerusalem a variety of different things were used to make the writing materials, whereas the Dead Sea region, used a specific type of charcoal that was significantly softer than the charcoal found in the Jerusalem region.

codeddesign• 7 years ago

Having been to both locations, I can easily say that they are extremely close (relatively speaking). People would walk MUCH longer distances than this at the time (ie Egypt to Bethlehem). There was also war, famine, an extremely lack of safety services, and an entirely different world back then. Storing things that were sacred or considered extremely important would have been placed in a safe location regardless of the distance (35 miles back then is like 2 miles for us now).

wickerman• 7 years ago

I find the study of materials in papyrology/religious studies/history truly fascinating. I'm more familiar with the history and content of the Nag Hammadi library, but it really is fascinating how much experts can tell from the materials, the word usage, the language they were written in.

throwaway218649• 7 years ago

The Dead Sea scrolls need a serious re-examination by modern scholars not biased towards mainstream Christianity, similar to the work on Jesus mythicism that has been done over the past 20 years that draws on Gnostic, Essene, and other historically contemporary sources. John Allegro's work on the Dead Sea scrolls needs a non-biased re-examination: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Allegro

ilimilku6• 7 years ago

The Christian bias on scroll scholarship was widely corrected in the 90s with the Scrolls' public release. Since then Jewish scholarship of the Scrolls has contributed an enormous amount, cf. Lawrence Schiffman, Emanuel Tov, et al.

whenchamenia• 7 years ago

How about research unencumbered by deeply held beliefs relating to the scrolls? Jewish scholars are hardly unbiased.

Dead Sea scrolls study raises new questions over texts' origins

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