The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception (full text)

Discussion about the Hebrew Bible, Septuagint, pseudepigrapha, Philo, Josephus, Talmud, Dead Sea Scrolls, archaeology, etc.
Roger Pearse
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Re: The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception (full text)

Post by Roger Pearse »

NB: Baigent and Leigh are headbangers, creating bogus books full of sensational claims. Why? For money. Why else?
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stephan happy huller
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Re: The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception (full text)

Post by stephan happy huller »

The Nag Hammadi discovery occurred in December 1945, when a couple of Egyptian peasants digging for fertiliser found a buried jar, and, hoping for gold, smashed it open. I digested some notes on the find here. Publication was only in 1972-84
Of course when Carlson and other question the amount of time it took for Morton Smith to publish the Mar Saba discovery (it was actually transcribed immediately after his return to New York but only formerly published in 1973 for a variety of reasons/sent to the publishers in the late sixties) these 'conservative headbangers' get a pass from Roger. IMO Carlson had a different motive - i.e. currying favor with conservative scholars like Hurtado who detested what the discovery said, wanted to find any excuse to ignore it. Carlson did very well by Mark Goodacre and the staff at Duke - another collection of enemies of the text.
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beowulf
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Re: The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception (full text)

Post by beowulf »

Joseph_Abbott wrote:
stephan happy huller wrote:Dumbest book of all time. Makes Joe Atwill read like Shakespeare.
I don't think the book is stupid at all. Its a great summary of the suppression of the scrolls by the Catholics. It actually isn't as harsh as it could be. It doesnt mention the fact the the Catholic scholars smoked around the scrolls and taped them together using regular scotch tape, causing extensive damage to the scrolls.

The author's little theory tacked on to the end of the book about Jesus being a Zealot, is of course stupid, but I can see why they wanted to try to introduce some controversy - it sells books. And at least they preceded Reza Aslan by 20 years. (I'm not sure how Aslan made a fortune rehashing that old idea).

Geza Vermes writes in the introduction of his book, The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English:
On my first visit to Jerusalem in 1952, I was allowed to examine the fragment of the Rule of the Congregation (1QSa)...

The secrecy rule of later years, restricting access to unpublished texts to a small team of editors appointed by [Father] de Vaux. had not yet been applied... It should have been evident to anyone with a modicum of good sense that a group of seven editors of whom only two, Starcky and Skehan, had already established a scholarly reputation was insufficient to perform such an enormous task on any level, let alone to produce the kind of ‘last word’ edition de Vaux appears to have contemplated.

The second serious error committed by de Vaux was that that he wholly relied on his personal quasi-patriarchal authority instead of setting up from the start a supervisory body empowered , if necessary, to sack those members of the team who might fail to fulfil their obligations promptly and to everyone’s satisfaction.

Geza Vermes
The complete Dead Sea scrolls in English
Translated by Geza Vermes
Penguin Classics, Revised Edition, 2004
ISBN 9780140449525
Last edited by beowulf on Mon Nov 04, 2013 11:01 am, edited 1 time in total.
beowulf
Posts: 498
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Re: The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception (full text)

Post by beowulf »

beowulf wrote:
Joseph_Abbott wrote:
stephan happy huller wrote:Dumbest book of all time. Makes Joe Atwill read like Shakespeare.
I don't think the book is stupid at all. Its a great summary of the suppression of the scrolls by the Catholics. It actually isn't as harsh as it could be. It doesnt mention the fact the the Catholic scholars smoked around the scrolls and taped them together using regular scotch tape, causing extensive damage to the scrolls.

The author's little theory tacked on to the end of the book about Jesus being a Zealot, is of course stupid, but I can see why they wanted to try to introduce some controversy - it sells books. And at least they preceded Reza Aslan by 20 years. (I'm not sure how Aslan made a fortune rehashing that old idea).

Geza Vermes writes in the introduction of his book, The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English:
On my first visit to Jerusalem in 1952, I was allowed to examine the fragment of the Rule of the Congregation (1QSa)...

The secrecy rule of later years, restricting access to unpublished texts to a small team of editors appointed by [Father] de Vaux. had not yet been applied... It should have been evident to anyone with a modicum of good sense that a group of seven editors of whom only two, Starcky and Skehan, had already established a scholarly reputation was insufficient to perform such an enormous task on any level, let alone to produce the kind of ‘last word’ edition de Vaux appears to have contemplated.

The second serious error committed by de Vaux was that that he wholly relied on his personal quasi-patriarchal authority instead of setting up from the start a supervisory body empowered , if necessary, to sack those members of the team who might fail to fulfil their obligations promptly and to everyone’s satisfaction.

Geza Vermes
The complete Dead Sea scrolls in English
Translated by Geza Vermes
Penguin Classics, Revised Edition, 2004
ISBN 9780140449525
With the occupation of East Jerusalem in the Six Day War.... Father de Vaux, whose anti-Israeli sentiments were no secret, quietly withdrew to his tent and remained inactive until his death in 1971.

Another French Dominican, Pierre Benoit, succeed him as it were by natural selection in the editorial board chair in 1972.The Israeli archaeological department, still aloof, conferred its blessings on him...

In a lecture delivered in 1977, I coined the phrase which was thereafter often repeated that the greatest Hebrew manuscript discovery was fast becoming ‘the academic scandal par excellence of the twentieth century’

In 1986, a year before his death, Pierre Benoit resigned as editor-in-chief and the depleted international team elected as his successor the talented but tardy John Strugnell, who in thirty-three years failed to produce a single volume of text....


1990-2003
After John Strugnell withdrawal, the very capable Emmanuel Tov, professor of biblical studies at the Hebrew university, was appointed chief editor...

The protective dam erected around the fragments by the international team collapsed in the autumn of 1991
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