Freeing the Dead Sea Scrolls: And Other Adventures of an Archaeology Outsider

265 Pages·2010·6.24 MB·English

by  Hershel Shanks

Freeing
The Dead Sea
Scrolls
and Other
Adventures of
an Archaeology
Outsider
books by hershel shanks
Jerusalem’s Temple Mount: From Solomon to the Golden Dome
The Copper Scroll and the Search for the Temple Treasure
Jerusalem: An Archaeological Biography
The Mystery and Meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls
The City of David: A Guide to Biblical Jerusalem
Judaism in Stone: The Archaeology of Ancient Synagogues
The Dead Sea Scrolls After Forty Years (with James C. VanderKam, P.
Kyle McCarter, Jr., and James A. Sanders)
The Rise of Ancient Israel (with William G. Dever,
Baruch Halpern, P. Kyle McCarter, Jr.)
The Brother of Jesus (with Ben Witherington III)
books edited by hershel shanks
The Art and Craft of Judging: The Opinions of Judge Learned Hand
Scholars on the Record: Insightful Interviews on Bible and Archaeology
Ancient Israel: From Abraham to the Roman Destruction of Jerusalem
Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism: A Parallel History of Their Origins
and Early Development
Understanding the Dead Sea Scrolls
Archaeology and the Bible: The Best of BAR, 2 vols. (with Dan P. Cole)
Feminist Approaches to the Bible (with Phyllis Trible, Tivka
Frymer-Kensky, Pamela J. Milne, Jane Schaberg)
Recent Archaeology in the Land of Israel (with Benjamin Mazar)
The Search for Jesus (with Stephen J. Patterson, Marcus J. Borg, John
Dominic Crossan)
Frank Moore Cross: Conversations with a Bible Scholar
Abraham & Family: New Insights into the Patriarchal Narratives
Freeing
The Dead Sea
Scrolls
and Other
Adventures of
an Archaeology
Outsider
hershel shanks
Published by the Continuum International Publishing Group
The Tower Building 80 Maiden Lane
11 York Road Suite 704
London SE1 7NX New York, NY 10038
www.continuumbooks.com
Copyright © Hershel Shanks, 2010.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval
system, without prior permission from the publishers.
First published 2010

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-1441-15217-6

Designed and typeset by Newgen Imaging Systems Pvt Ltd, Chennai, India
Printed and bound in the United States of America
contents
AAcckknnoowwlleeddggmmeennttss vviiii
PPrreeffaaccee iixx
II.. IInn tthhee BBeeggiinnnniinngg 11
II. The Sharon Years 13
IIIIII.. MMyy CCoolllleeggee YYeeaarrss 2255
IIVV.. CCoolluummbbiiaa,, HHaarrvvaarrdd aanndd tthhee DDeeppaarrttmmeenntt ooff JJuussttiiccee 3311
VV.. PPrraaccttiicciinngg LLaaww 3399
VI. Our Year in Israel 59
VVIIII.. SSttaarrttiinngg BBAARR 8811
VVIIIIII.. MMaattuurriinngg BBAARR 9977
IX. Freeing the Scrolls 125
XX.. LLoossiinngg iinn CCoouurrtt 116611
XI. Two Extraordinary Inscriptions—
TThhee PPoommeeggrraannaattee aanndd tthhee OOssssuuaarryy 117777
XII. A Royal Israelite Inscription—
TThhee YYeehhooaasshh PPllaaqquuee?? 119933
X XIIIIII.. ““TThhee FFoorrggeerryy TTrriiaall ooff tthhee CCeennttuurryy”” aanndd BBeeyyoonndd 220033
XIV. My Credo 231
Notes 237
IIlllluussttrraattiioonn CCrreeddiittss 224433
Index 245
v
to judith
mmyy wwiiffee ooff 4433 yyeeaarrss,, tthhee mmootthheerr ooff mmyy cchhiillddrreenn
Elizabeth and Julia and the grandmother of my
ggrraannddcchhiillddrreenn CChhaarrlliiee aanndd NNaannccyy,, ttoo wwhhoomm,, tthheenn JJuuddyy,,
mmyy fifi rrsstt bbooookk wwaass ddeeddiiccaatteedd iinn 11996688
Acknowledgments
i should like to begin these acknowledgments by venting my
anger at the contractor I hired to build my treadmill room in the base-
ment. He left a pile of sawdust overnight near an outside drain; a
heavy rain that night swept the sawdust over the drain and blocked it.
The result was a fl ooded basement that destroyed, among much else,
my family photos. I am grateful to my sister Leah Gordon for supply-
ing the family pictures in this volume.
Three excellent editors reviewed my text and each made a signifi -
cant contribution to it. I thank Steven Feldman, G. Joseph Corbett
and John Loudon for their help.
Most important was the staff of the Biblical Archaeology Society—
my longtime colleague, BAS president and Biblical Archaeology Review
publisher Susan Laden; BAR administrative editor Bonnie Mullin;
production manager Heather Metzger; and Janet Bowman who does
everything.
The inside of the book was designed by graphic designer Rob
Sugar, with whom I have worked happily for more than 30 years, and
his assistant Jinna Hagerty of Auras Design.
Hershel Shanks
washington, d.c.
november 2009
vii
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Preface
i am sitting in an unfamiliar courtroom in Jerusalem.
In general, I am accustomed to courtrooms. For years, I repre-
sented the United States of America in courtrooms all over the country
when I was a lawyer with the Department of Justice. I know how to
question my witnesses on direct and how to examine the other guy’s
witnesses on cross.
But this is different. I am here not as a lawyer representing
someone. I am the defendant!
The testimony is in Hebrew, which I do not understand. My
daughter, who is fl uent in Hebrew, sits beside me to provide the gist
of the testimony against me.
The plaintiff is a distinguished Israeli scholar named Elisha Qimron,
a professor at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beer-Sheba.
I had published without permission Professor Qimron’s one-page
Hebrew reconstruction of a fragmentary Dead Sea Scroll known as
MMT, in an effort to break the scroll monopoly. Although the recon-
struction had circulated widely in samizdat copies, it had not been
offi cially published by Qimron and Harvard professor John Strugnell
to whom it had been offi cially assigned. Moreover, I had not men-
tioned Qimron’s name in my publication; Qimron was anonymous.
I listen as Qimron testifi es: For 11 consecutive years, he had
worked on the reconstruction I had published. “During the years
I worked on it, I did almost no other work.” During this time, he says,
his “whole family lived very frugally ... When my wife complained,
I would tell her, ‘Look, this is our life; we will achieve fame.’”
When I published his reconstruction, he was “shocked ... I can’t
describe the feeling ... It’s as if someone came and took away the thing
I had made by force, telling me: ‘Go away! This belongs to me!’”
I watch the judge and see those tell-tale half-expressions that
reveal her sympathy for the plaintiff, as she indeed turned out to
ix