Neese

By Shelley Neese

The discovery of the first Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947 marked the beginning of a new era in Biblical scholarship.  The scrolls predated the oldest known copies of the Hebrew Bible by a thousand years.  They outlined the messianic hopes, prophetic interpretations, apocalyptic beliefs, and strict communal practices of a Jewish community unlike either the Pharisees or Sadducees, the two most well-known sects of the Second Temple period.  After a half century more of archeological excavation and scroll study one glaring question remains unanswered: Who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls?

Almost immediately, the scrolls were associated with Qumran, an area of ruins near the Dead Sea.  Out of 11 caves, six are within a quarter mile of Qumran.  The cave which stored the largest cache of scrolls is just 500 yards from the ruins.  In addition, Jodi Magness, a University of North Carolina professor, identifies another connection between Qumran and the scrolls; the same peculiar type of pottery jars that contained the scrolls was excavated at Qumran.  Excavations also revealed several ink wells—a rare find at comparable sites from this period and potential evidence that at least some occupants were scribes.  According to this logic, the Dead Sea Scrolls must have made up a permanent library for the inhabitants of Qumran.  But who were Qumran’s residents?

From the outset, academics believed Qumran was a branch of the Essene movement, a sect of Jews who separated themselves from the leadership of the Second Temple and practiced a stricter form of Judaism than their religious contemporaries.  The first-century Jewish historian Josephus claims to have spent time with the Essenes personally.  In his writings, Josephus goes into great detail about the Essenes’ initiation processes, purity rituals, finances, and even toilet habits.  The communal practices Josephus describes, like the pooling of personal property, seem to match the requirements laid out in the Community Rule, one of the most popular manuscripts in the Dead Sea collection.  The Damascus Document, another common manuscript at Qumran, depicts a strict interpretation of religious law that matches what we know to be true of the Essenes, as opposed to the Pharisees or Sadducees. 

Pliny the Elder, an ancient Roman geographer, mentions the location of the Essenes in his book Natural History (77 A.D.).  He describes the Essenes living at a necessary distance “to the west of the Dead Sea,” above the town of Ein Gedi.  Pliny’s description seems to correspond with Qumran’s location.

Aspects of Qumran’s architecture also seemed to fit what an ascetic group focused on community and cleanliness would need.  In the ruins, there are at least eight stepped pools, identified as mikvahs, a necessity for the Essenes’ ritual purity laws.  In the excavations, a pantry was discovered with tall stacks of plates and bowls, pointing to the existence of communal meals, an important observance for Essenes according to Josephus.  Twelve hundred ancient graves lie near Qumran; a small portion of these were unearthed in the 1950s.  All the corpses received a strict religious burial, and most were male, aligning with the thought that the Essenes of Qumran were a celibate all-male community.

For three decades, the question of who wrote the scrolls seemed to be settled.  Biblical scholars widely accepted that Essenes occupied Qumran, and that these occupants owned the scrolls.  This theory fell in line with the conclusions of Pere Roland de Vaux, a French archeologist who in 1951-1956 was the first to excavate Qumran professionally. 

By the late 1980s, however, cracks in the Essene theory began to emerge.  De Vaux had died before he completed a final report from his Qumran excavations.  Scholars, tasked with cataloguing and publishing de Vaux’s material, returned to the archeological record on Qumran to take a second look at the findings. What they determined, rightly or wrongly, is that the original excavations failed to establish a concrete link between Qumran and the scrolls.  For example, no scrolls or pieces of scrolls were found at Qumran.  Out of 900 scrolls and scroll fragments, nowhere mentioned is the term “Essene” or the name of any other known Jewish sect.  As for Josephus, he says the Essenes lived in towns all over Israel but never specifically mentions Qumran as an Essene center.  Further, excavations revealed an insufficient number of private dwellings at Qumran for a place assumed to house a religious community. 

Professor Norman Golb of the University of Chicago is the most ardent dissenter from the Essene theory.  Golb thinks too many Jewish viewpoints and textual traditions are represented in the Dead Sea Scrolls to say this is the work of just one group.  He also notes that a small sectarian community would not have possessed such a large library.  The community would have unlikely contained the number of scribes sufficient to produce so many manuscripts.  Golb thinks many different groups wrote the scrolls, which he supposes were removed from Jerusalem libraries during the Roman war.  Jews fleeing the Roman forces between 66 and 73 A.D. went to Qumran a day’s walk and hid the scrolls in caves for safekeeping.  The problem with Golb’s theory lies in the opinions of the sectarian scrolls’ authors, who write about a deep hostility toward the groups controlling the Temple and who do not express the views of mainstream Judaism at the time.

Two established Israeli archaeologists, Yuval Peleg and Yitzhak Magen the most recent to excavate Qumran propose the site was just a pottery factory that had nothing to do with the Essenes.  They say the scrolls came from the sectarian libraries of Jewish refugees under Roman threat.  Peleg and Magen recognize the pottery link between Qumran and the caves but theorize that the refugees hastily took jars from Qumran which by that time might have been vacated to hide their scroll deposits before fleeing the region.

A new book recently added to the debate stirs up even more controversy.  Professor Rachel Elior of Hebrew University claims in Memory and Oblivion that the scrolls came from Jerusalem and were written by the Sadducees—ousted Temple priests.  Elior goes one step further, claiming Josephus invented the Essenes and they never really existed. 

The argument over the origins of the Dead Sea Scrolls brings normally collected scholars close to physical blows.  Not all theories mentioned here were presented passively by academics looking to foster constructive debate.  Among the scroll scholars exists an Essene camp and an anti-Essene camp.  Golb has claimed for years that the pro-Essene scholars have tried to silence him, frequently calling them fanatics.  Magen, called the proponents of the Qumran Sect theory “a guild with money and conferences.”

This past March, the academic feud reached a new low—lower than the Dead Sea itself.  Golb’s 49-year-old son, Raphael, was arrested for an Internet plot to promote his father’s theories.  He used at least 80 fake online aliases to post inflammatory comments on blogs defending the credibility of his father’s theories.  According to the Manhattan District Attorney, Raphael was “creating multiple aliases to engage in a campaign of impersonation and harassment relating to the Dead Sea Scrolls and scholars of opposing viewpoints.”  In at least one case Raphael opened an e-mail account under the name of New York University professor Lawrence H. Schiffman, who opposed Golb’s opinions.  Sending e-mails in Schiffman’s name, Raphael fabricated a confession from the NYU professor that he had plagiarized parts of Golb’s work. 

Despite the best efforts of Raphael and the depth of emotion surrounding the debate on the origins of the scrolls, no new consensus has yet replaced the Essene hypothesis or categorically disproved it.  In the intriguing world of scroll scholarship, academics who think the Essenes wrote the manuscripts are still in the clear majority.  In the last 25 years, the landscape of scroll scholarship has changed as a growing group of dissenters has succeeded in adding a degree of doubt to a theory once accepted unanimously.  The case is never closed.  In the fickle field of archeology and scroll study, we are always one discovery away from changing the entire question.

Shelley Neese is managing editor for the The Jerusalem Connection Report.

By Shelley Neese

Driving down Israel’s Highway 90 in a nine passenger rental van, a group of explorers stare silently at the Judean desert outside.  They’ve come from Oklahoma and North Texas and their stories leading them here are as varied as their silhouettes against the van windows.  They are united in this, they each know that somewhere out there, hidden under thousands of years of dust and rock, lies the priestly vestments, the urn of the red heifer, and the gold and silver contained in the ancient temple of Israel.  Maybe more is waiting, maybe the Ark of the Covenant itself.  They’re convinced they know where to look, and in a matter of hours shovels will finally break ground.

The team’s boss is Jim Barfield.  A retired fire marshal, Barfield has a deep tan and thick white hair that falls below his shoulder blades, making him look more Native American than he can actually account for.  Two years ago, he applied his arson investigation skills to the Copper Scroll, a treasure map found hidden in a cave with other Dead Sea Scrolls.  He believes he’s “cracked the code” to the treasure locations that have eluded scholars for fifty years.  Barfield has no university degree but he retired young so he could have more time for study and research, which usually takes place at a local Starbucks in Lawton, Oklahoma. 

As for the rest of the team, each is as unlikely as the next to be included in something like this.  Mac—a successful cattle rancher who’d been gored by a bull the day before leaving for Israel—had never been on an airplane before.  His seven foot frame made for an interesting contortion in economy class.  The last time Larry was in an international city was Saigon during Vietnam.  Ken invented a remote control robot on wheels mounted with an infrared camera to use at some of the harder to reach sites.  Shawn, the project’s videographer, is Barfield’s son.  Laid-back with his director’s goatee and vintage clothing, he’s documented every important moment leading up to the dig.  Linda is a surgical nurse and Messianic who made sure that on the weekends the team had proper Shabbats.  Chris is an online tractor dealer who some consider Barfield’s armor-bearer. Barfield’s right hand man from the beginning, he’s never missed an exploratory trip to Israel, speaking engagement, or planning meeting. 

April 21 is the first scheduled dig day for The Copper Scroll Project and the group has to drive from Arad—where they have been loaned a free house to stay—to the Dead Sea area.  Highway 90, the only way to get there, is a roller-coaster of a road where the driver has no option but to ride the breaks all the way down the winding decline.  Reaching the lowest place on Earth isn’t easy.

As the team piles out from the van, the archeologist, Oren, from the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) is already waiting.  Soft-spoken by Israeli standards, Oren has a large frame, wears a black pair of Oakley sunglasses, and ties a white shirt to the top of his bald head for sun protection.  He hadn’t been warned that such a large group was coming with Barfield, but he politely shakes hands and introduces everyone to his three Palestinian diggers, his work companions for the last seventeen years. 

Within thirty minutes black tarps with large holes are loosely tied to metal poles stuck in the ground.  The digging is about to commence.  For all the technological advances of the modern world, the archeological process is still surprisingly primitive:  picks, shovels, and buckets. 

Barfield is allowed to select the place where he wants to start the dig.  He chooses the last place listed in the Copper Scroll, but the most important because it promises another scroll that clarifies all the hiding spots. 

Item 64:  “In the tunnel which is in Sechab, to the North of Kochlit, which opens towards the North and has graves in its entrance: a copy of this text and its explanation and its measurements and the inventory of everything, item by item.” 

No one from the team is allowed to help with the digging but they are too excited to sit passively and watch.  Each person finds their own non-intrusive perch, out from the tarp and away from Oren and Barfield, but close enough that they won’t miss a thing.  After thirty minutes, before the diggers break a sweat, a strange lip forms in a part of the rock indicating an empty cavity.  The diggers follow with their picks where the lip curves under.  Ken gives the group a hopeful wink and Chris sneaks a thumbs up.  Shawn adjusts his camera for a better angle while whispering to his dad, “Maybe after this we can go search for Atlantis.” Barfield stays quiet and never takes his eyes off the shovels.  Linda prays aloud, anointing the caves contents.  Oren moves the diggers aside to get a better look. 

The Palestinians pull out thirty buckets of dirt and one scorpion before they hit solid rock behind the lip.  Oren brushes the area off for a final examination and reports without emotion, “It’s nothing.”  The giddy chatter turns into a deflated silence.  If they’re looking for a cave entry, solid rock equals dead end.  Barfield sends a few team members back to the van to get chairs and ice chests.  Shawn turns one camera off; he’s thinking about conserving battery now. 

The lip is just a small portion of the potential cave site and the diggers go for five more hours, wrapping around the rock heap to a depth of about three feet.  When the tarps no longer protect them from the midday sun, the work pace slows and water breaks increase.  The team is hot and starting to admit to each other that at this pace it will be a longer process than anyone first thought.  They creep under the tarp, figuring if they keep quiet then they can enjoy the shade without bothering Oren and the diggers.

At that moment, Oren says he wants to stop digging at the cave and move on to test another site.  “There is no sign of humans being here—no pottery, no nothing.  It’s just natural dirt.”  Barfield, who has not sat down all day, stands there in his battle dress uniform—a white V-neck shirt, camoflauge pants, and a leather explorer hat which could easily land him a role in an Indiana Jones sequel.  Barfield’s confidence in his theory isn’t shaken but he knows that for the cave to be fully tested they will have to dig another six feet down and ten feet back.  Not wanting to get the dig bogged down but also wanting to leave the door open to return at some point to the rock, Barfield negotiates.  “That’s fine.”  He says.  “All I ask is that the dirt not be filled back in.”  Oren agrees.

Item 9: “And in the gutter which is in it: ten talents.”

On day two of the dig Oren suggests testing the gutter, the ninth site listed in the scroll.  A year earlier on a scouting trip, Barfield and Chris casually peaked into this gutter’s opening, spotting a jewel seven inches long lying in the dirt.  What they thought was the biggest diamond they’d ever seen was actually a 13-sided prism used in New Age ceremonies for Earth healing (similar ones on Ebay go for a thousand dollars).  Since that day, Barfield has hoped that if a prism could be on the dirt’s surface then greater things could lie underneath.

Without knowing exactly where the items in the gutter are buried, the entire length of the shaft needs to be excavated, about twenty feet.  Ken’s robot camera sits in the van on standby.  Only two diggers can work at a time and each shovel of dirt is examined for artifacts.  Since over two-thousand years at least a foot of dirt has blown into the gutter, getting past cigarette butts and grocery bags to a first century level takes two hours.  The diggers have trouble getting at the correct angle to properly excavate the shaft. 

After finding no more than pottery shards, Oren decides it’s time to test a third site.  Barfield shows no hint of dejection but does speak up.  “The depths the Scroll mentions are around six feet below virgin soil.”  He says.  “We haven’t gotten close to that.”  Oren advises that it’s best to return later to the gutter with a metal detector. 

Item 44 and 45: In the cistern which is to the North of the mouth of narrow pass of Beth-Tamer, in the rocky ground of Ger Pela, everything which is there is a sacred offering.  In the dovecote of the fortress of Nabata […]

Barfield wants to avoid repeating the same problems as the first two dig sites and believes its time to visit one of the most pinpointed of the sixty total locations.  Oren chooses a different site along a broken wall, which the team fears has all the same problems as the other two.  It will require a further depth than Oren may be willing to check.  Normally very talkative, Barfield nods, avoiding any conflict with his archeologist. 

“I wish I could get in there and do the digging myself,” Mac says aloud to anyone who’ll listen.  Larry paces the dirt and formulates conspiracies to explain who in the Israeli government is stopping these items from being found.  Shawn has the look of a concerned son.  He has his own ambitions to make a career-defining documentary, but he sets the camera down and watches his father, looking for any sign of disappointment.  He sees only a determined father who doesn’t give up easy, but he leans over to me saying, “What will Paw tell everyone back home at Starbucks if we have to quit already?”

To properly excavate around the wall, the Palestinian diggers will need to go at least eight feet deep and stretch the entire breadth of the wall.  They look confused when Oren gives these directions as their excavation routine never goes past virgin soil.  The Arabic banter increases and their mood becomes testy, but they ultimately exhume a hole four feet deep and three feet wide. Mac stands in the hole and it stops around his chest. 

None of the three sites are filled back in because Oren wants to use a metal detector over them before making a conclusion.  The morning they meet to metal detect also happens to be Israel’s Memorial Day for fallen soldiers of war.  Oren is active in the reserves and is scheduled to be part of the day’s ceremonies.  “We have just one hour to do this.”  He tells Barfield.  “I have to be back for the ceremonies at nine.”  Barfield knows one hour is a desperate attempt at best.  “Okay,” he mutters back, “glad we’re on time.  Let’s see what we can do.”  Oren pulls a White’s metal detector out of his truck, a good brand but it will not detect metal more than three feet deep.  Oren makes an unusual request: no videotaping while he is detecting.  He rushes off with Barfield and Chris to go over the sites.  The only time the detector beeps is when it touches Oren’s steel-toed shoe or picks up the occasional gum wrapper. 

As the group walks back to the car frustrated from the course of the short day, Oren senses the disappointment.  “Archeology requires patience.”  He offers to the group.  “And I have a lot of it.”

Nervous silence engulfs the van now on its way back to Arad.  All eyes are on Barfield, and he knows the next words spoken must be his own.  “This operation has been like having a huge bowl of your favorite ice cream placed in front of you,” he says, “and only getting one lick.”  He stops at the next gas station and sponsors ice cream bars for all. 

When Jim Barfield first cracked the code on the Copper Scroll he was in his home office in Oklahoma and had no idea what to do with the information.  Just two years later, he was beaming at the site of the first shovels breaking ground.  “I still can’t get over that we are here and the dig is actually happening.”  He says.  “I have to be thankful it has come this far.”  Nothing in Barfield’s research has been proven, but nothing has been disproven either.  For now the project goes on even as the group returns home to the U.S.  They remain as loyal and confident as ever, if not a little battle-hardened.  All they need is a fresh dose of patience, and the next dig schedule.   

Shelley Neese is managing editor for the The Jerusalem Connection Report.

By  Shelley  Neese

The Ark of the Covenant has not been seen since the destruction of Jerusalem by Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar.  2600 years, however, has not been long enough to kill the curiosity or exhaust the imagination of the many who ponder the Ark’s fate.  The burning question is how something so holy and central to Jewish worship could disappear without explanation.  The Babylonian’s detailed list of stolen Temple items makes no mention of the Ark; the Bible offers no resolution on whether the Ark was stolen, lost, or destroyed.  The Copper Scroll is the first archeological discovery that sheds light on the issue and could even lead to the Ark’s recovery. 

The Copper Scroll is an anomaly in the Dead Sea Scroll Collection.  Found in 1952, like the other scrolls, the Copper Scroll was found in a cave near the ruins of Qumran and was thus attributed to the Essenes.  As its nickname implies it is a scroll written on thin copper sheets.  Unlike the rest of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Copper Scroll has no literary or religious content; it is an inventory of sixty-four obscure locations where gold, silver, and other treasures are said to be hidden. 

Most scholars would deny any direct connection between the Copper Scroll and the Ark.  Admittedly, the Ark is not directly mentioned in the Scroll.  However, there is a common scholarly assumption that the contents that are listed in the Scroll came from the Jewish Temple.  The Copper Scroll describes a hoard of precious metals and coins estimated to be worth around two billion dollars today.  The only place in ancient Israel that would have had access to so much wealth was the Temple treasury.  Jews in the land and in the Diaspora had brought substantial wealth to the Jewish temple through regular free-will offerings.

In addition to temple tithes, the Scroll refers to other movable temple items like ‘dedicated vessels,’ ‘consecrated’ items, and priestly garments.  Temple vessels are referred to in at least three sections of the Scroll and priestly ephods are named once.  According to Copper Scroll expert B. Pixner, the fourth section of the Scroll references the Breastplate of the High Priest.  In the twenty-sixth section of the Scroll, the scribe uses the same Hebrew word for “pitcher” that is almost exclusively used for the Qalal, the urn which held the ashes of the Red Heifer.  Albert Wolters, a  professor of Religion and Theology in Ontario who focuses on the Dead Sea Scrolls, makes an argument that the proper translation for the last hiding place of the Copper Scroll reads “the Cavern of the Shekinah.”  Shekinah when used in the Bible designates the Divine Presence as it inhabits the Tabernacle (Exod. 40:35) and the Temple in Jerusalem.

There seems to also be a more cryptic reference in the Scroll to the Ark.  According to the translation of John Allegro, the first person allowed to study the Copper Scroll, the text opens with: “In the desolations of the Valley of Achor, under the hill that must be climbed, hidden under the east side, forty stones deep, is a silver chest, and with it, the vestments of the High Priest, all the gold and silver with the Great Tabernacle [Mishkhan] and all its Treasures.”  Mishkan is the Hebrew word used for the Wilderness Tabernacle, the Tabernacle that the Israelis carried during the forty years of wandering and the contents of which were later transferred to the Ark. 

The prevailing opinion in Copper Scroll studies is that, like the rest of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Copper Scroll dates between 150 BCE and 70 CE.  Logic would follow that the Scroll is referring to second Temple treasures secreted away before the Roman invasion.  If this theory stands, then the Copper Scroll likely has no connection to the Ark since the Ark was absent from the Second Temple. 
A less popular—but no less interesting—theory is that the Copper Scroll treasure is from the First Temple and was removed by Temple guardians before the Babylonian invasion.  The scroll would likely have been hid in a cave during the Babylonian exile.  The idea that the Copper Scroll could be a precursor to the Dead Sea Scrolls has some credibility given its unique Biblical language.  The Scroll’s script and word construction has eluded many paleographers (experts in ancient script) because it is unlike any of the other Dead Sea Scrolls or texts from the suspected period of production.  Some passages have paleographic dates around 70 CE, but other passages date back 700 years earlier. 
Vendyl Jones—an explorer who has devoted thirty years to studying the Copper Scroll—and Jim Barfield—a retired fire marshal who believes he has cracked the code on the Copper Scroll (see my Copper Scroll articles from the last two issues)—believe the Second book of Maccabees and two other extra-Biblical texts give the background to the Copper Scroll.

II Maccabees tells the story of the prophet Jeremiah receiving a divine warning about the Babylonian invasion to come.  Jeremiah took the sacred Temple treasures—including the Wilderness Tabernacle, the Ark and its contents, and the Qalal—and hid them in a hollow cave near Mount Nebo (Deut. 34:1).  After Jeremiah sealed the entrance his followers complained they could not find the site.   Jeremiah replied “the place shall be unknown until God gathers His people together again and shows His mercy.”
In 1922 an eighteenth century writing called Emeq HaMelekh written by Rav Hertz, an authority on oral Torah, was found in Amsterdam.  In Emeq HaMelekh, Hertz goes into detail describing the mission directed by the prophet Jeremiah to hide the Ark and other sacred things.   Hertz wrote that seven years before the destruction of Solomon’s Temple, five holy men “concealed the vessels of the Temple and the wealth of the treasures that were in Jerusalem.”  Once the guardians hid the objects they inscribed the inventory and secret locations on a Luach Nehoshet (copper plate).  Emeq HaMelekh warns that the Temple items will “not be discovered until the day of the coming of Moschiach, son of David.”

As his source, Hertz cited in his introduction a Tosefta Mishnayot (Rabbinic writing) which was unknown to modern Talmudists until twenty years ago.  In 1990 proof of the Tosephta Mishnayot surfaced in an 8th century genizah (document deposit) recovered from Cairo, Egypt.  Though the genizah document predated Emeq HaMelekh by a thousand years, it gave the same story as Rav Hertz about the Temple rescue operation, named the same five holy men, and referenced the copper plate. 
Could the Copper Scroll now sitting in a museum in Jordan be the Luach Nehoshet?  The possibility is tantalizing.  Excluding Jones and Barfield, however, few Copper Scroll experts have given the connection any merit—mostly because archeologist frown upon using ancient literary texts to aid in finding artifacts. 

Even still, outside of a Hollywood movie studio, never before has there been a treasure map that held this kind of promise and suspense.  The Copper Scroll may be our closest witness to the Ark’s fate.  Watch Raiders of the Lost Ark one too many times and you can not put down the sneaking suspicion that if the Ark is ever meant to be found it will be the Luach Nehoshet—not Prof. Indiana Jones—that leads us to it. 

Shelley Neese is managing editor for the The Jerusalem Connection Report.