In a development that represents a cultural coup for the public and a new theological battleground for academics, the Field Museum has announced that it will host an exhibit of the Dead Sea Scrolls next year, including some that have never been out of Israel.
These ancient writings, dating from the age of Jesus, are considered the most significant archeological find of the 20th Century, providing an unprecedented historical insight into the sacred scriptures of both Judaism and Christianity.
Discovered by a shepherd boy in a cave near the Dead Sea a half century ago, the Scrolls have long been the subject of intense debate–especially because no sooner were they found than they were hidden away from scholarly examination by a small group of biblical researchers who, for decades, refused all others access to the material.
The Scrolls are considered key to the understanding of the origins of the Christian religion and its relation to Judaism, as well their contemporary evolution. In addition to the ancient manuscripts, the Field’s exhibit will feature dozens of artifacts from the caves where they were found, including inkwells some scholars say were used by scribes who wrote the Scrolls and the jars the writings were stored in.
“This truly is a coup,” said James Phillips, an adjunct Field curator and anthropologist at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Phillips negotiated the loan of the Scrolls from the Israeli Antiquities Authority, which controls the documents housed in two Jerusalem museums. “The Israelis are putting together a group of Scrolls expressly for Chicago, with a theme they suggested about early Christianity.”
Their three-month stay, from March 10 to June 11, 2000, at the lakefront institution is likely to be accompanied by scholarly fireworks. In conjunction with the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, the Field Museum is planning a series of symposiums at which world-class experts will debate the meaning of the Scrolls, religious texts set down by scribes in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek on parchment and papyrus from about 300 B.C. to about 50 A.D.
Some Scrolls have been shown previously in the U.S., in New York, Washington, D.C., and San Francisco most recently.
In 1949 three fragments were exhibited at the Oriental Institute. But this will be the first time that a Scrolls exhibition will be accompanied by a serious airing of the thorny issues involving their interpretation.
Among the documents that will leave Israel for the first time are a series of Greek-language fragments dubbed the “beatitudes” because they seem to presage themes and language attributed to Jesus in the Gospels, even though they were written 150 years before Jesus’ birth. Carsten Thiede, a German scholar, set off a furious worldwide debate a few years back by suggesting these sections of the Dead Sea Scrolls were a kind of first draft of the Gospels.
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In broader terms, the Scrolls can present difficulties for Jewish and Christian believers alike, suggesting that both faiths were once more closely aligned than modern adherents are comfortable acknowledging. Some scholars say the texts could support the view that at the time of the Scrolls’ composition, a broad range of the Jewish community was exploring concepts that were subsequently identified with Christianity. Those include the notion of a forthcoming Messiah and the imminent end of the world.
For Christians, some of the manuscripts have been interpreted to suggest that ideas, and even words, later associated with Jesus were already being expressed in pre-Christian circles, perhaps calling into question the tenet of Christ’s uniqueness.
John McCarter, president of the Field Museum, began to engineer the Scrolls’ Chicago visit after seeing an exhibition of some of the manuscripts in Glasgow, Scotland, last year. McCarter asked Phillips, who has long excavated in the Sinai, to approach Israeli authorities about bringing the Scrolls to Chicago during the millennial year.
When the priceless Scrolls are flown to Chicago, they will be hand-carried by officials of the Israeli Antiquities Authority. The exhibit will occupy the Yates Exhibition Center, a 5,000-square-foot space on the east side of the museum’s main Stanley Field Hall.
The Newberry Library will augment the exhibit by lending the Field related materials from its collection, including ancient Bibles and documents, some dating to the 8th and 9th Centuries.
Field and Israeli officials are still fine-tuning details of the exhibition, according to Ariel Orlof, the museum’s project coordinator. Even the number of Scrolls to make the journey from Israel to Chicago has not been settled, though Orlov said that approximately 15 manuscripts will be shown.
Among the four Scrolls never allowed abroad before are a series of apocalyptic visions, whose authors evidently foresaw an Armageddon-like battle between the supporters of Good and Evil.
“The Heavens and the earth will obey His Messiah,” says the author of a Scroll dubbed by scholars the “Messiah of Heaven and Earth” fragment. “He will heal the sick, resurrect the dead, and to the Meek announce glad tidings.”
The Scrolls first saw the light in modern times in 1947, when a Bedouin shepherd happened upon a cave near Wadi Qumran, not far from the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea. There, 16-year-old Akmed el-Hamid found, hidden in a jar, three handwritten Scrolls, the rolled-up form in which books were published in ancient times.
At first, neither the boy nor his tribal elders knew what to make of the discovery. A nearby leather merchant, to whom the Scrolls were brought, thought of recycling their parchment to the shoe-repair trade. Then he decided to see if the Scrolls might fetch something on the antiques market, and so they were brought to the American School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem, where they were examined by a young scholar, John C. Trever.
“I put a magnifying glass to the Scroll and said to myself: `Oh, my Lord, can I really be looking at something 2,000 years old?” Trever once recalled for a Tribune reporter. “Then I remembered that in the haggling customs of the Near East, one doesn’t tip his hand precipitously. `Yes,’ I told them, `this might be worth something.’ “
In successive years, more manuscripts were found in other caves. A few fragments were sold to museums around the world, including Chicago’s Oriental Institute. Most were entrusted to a committee of a half-dozen scholars, established to supervise the piecing together of the myriad fragments in preparation for publication.
Even before the Scrolls were discovered, Biblical scholars knew that apocalyptic sects had existed within the Jewish community at the time of Jesus.
The ancient Jewish authors Philo and Josephus had described a group, the Essenes, who distanced themselves from their fellow Jews for the sake of a purer religious life. Some modern scholars even speculated that John the Baptist might have been an Essene.
Thus when some of the Dead Sea Scrolls seemed to describe a sect with beliefs and practices paralleling the Essenes’, the natural conclusion was that the Qumran manuscripts must be that group’s library.
More recently, some scholars have argued that their predecessors were too quick to link the Essenes and the Dead Sea Scrolls.
One is Norman Golb of the University of Chicago, who currently is helping to organize the symposiums that will accompany the Field exhibit. Golb thinks the Scrolls represent a broad-based sample of Jewish thought during that people’s great revolt against their Roman masters.
It had long been difficult to judge alternative theories because so few scholars had access to the manuscripts. Then in 1991, The Huntington Library, in San Marino, Calif., broke the embargo by allowing anybody to view its set of 3,000 photographs of the Scrolls, made by the original research team in the late 1940s and sent to California for safekeeping.