There's Nothing Dead About The Dead Sea Scrolls That A Lot of Money Couldn't Cure

Early in 1947, a young Bedouin boy was herding sheep or smuggling goods across the Jordan River, both of which his ancestors had probably done for thousands of years.

The smuggler-shepherd wandered into a cave, heard the crash of broken pottery, and found at his feet a piece of rotting leather. The discovery soon brought wealth to his people and enlightenment to Biblical scholars.

By 1948 the scholars had heard of this scroll in Qumran, Jordan, near the Dead Sea, and with its 18 foot Hebrew text they began to unravel Biblical history.

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Frank M. Cross Jr. is Handcock Professor of Hebrew and other Oriental Languages at Harvard and one of the world's most expert interpreters of Dead Sea scrolls. Last spring he landed in a Beirut airport, and dialed the phone number of his "contact." A man answered, abrupt and frightened, who "didn't know anything" and directed him to the Hotel Phoenicia.

At the hotel, Cross met the telephone voice, who proved to be a terrified Beirut banker who still knew nothing and was only "doing it for a friend."

But he wouldn't even do it for his friend until Cross had properly identified himself. When nothing in his wallet proved his identity to the banker's satisfaction, Cross led him to a library and pulled off the shelf one of his books on the Old Testament, displaying his own picture on the jacket. That was enough for the banker: Cross was indeed qualified to authenticate Biblical material and was certainly the man sent to handle the purchase of the scrolls.

The banker told Cross to wait, by himself, on a street corner in Old Beirut that night. Ignoring his disappointment at having to miss Beirut night life, Cross waited in the narrow streets of the old city. He suspected that the people he was meeting thought he had enough money with him to buy their scrolls on the spot and didn't quite know what they were planning to do with him.

"A car swished up," Cross remembers, with the banker driving, and another man in the front seat "hiding, with his head between his knees." Cross jumped into the back seat, and the car dodged through the back streets. He studied the back of the head of the person hiding in front of him. They drove past a street light. His fear vanished. "Kondo!" he shouted in Arabic. "Why are you taking me by so circuitous a route?"

Cross knew Kondo, for the Jordanian had served as middleman between him and the Bedouin in previus scroll sales. He was not quite honest, but at least not dangerous. The route became less "circuitous," the car halted at the banker's mansion, and Cross awaited the scrolls which he had traveled over 6000 miles to authenticate.

First Kondo brought out a delicate, yellowed letter written by Bar Koohba, the self-acclaimed messiah of the pre-Christian ews. They had sent Cross a picture of it when they asked him to come, and he knew it was authentic. They had promised him scrolls--supposedly 20 of them--found in Jordan and the Qumran caves on the west bank of the Dead Sea. He was hoping that one of the 20 would be the Temple Scroll, a Dead Sea scroll from the first century B.C. that was reputedly 28 feet long with the center section sompletely intact.

Kondo had no scrolls and would not get them until he received the money. The bargaining began: Cross would not procure his U.S. donor's money until he had established that the scrolls were not fake. Kondo said his party would never give up the scrolls until they had the money. The two compromised. If Kondo would send Cross pictures of the writing on each scroll and a photo of a complete scroll, Cross would tell if they were authentic and would pay without actually seeing them.

The transaction was interrupted by the Arab-Israeli war. Israel seized Qumran as well as the section of Jordan in which Kondo lived and arrested him. Upon his release, he presented the victors with the Temple scroll.

But Israel's new acquisition may have created another war casuality, for, by seizing the scroll, the Isrealis have very likely cut off the channel that has provided the scholars with scrolls for the last 15 years.

Jordan, where all the Dead Sea scrolls were found, forbade the Bedouins to dig up pand sell the scrolls. But the government did permit Bedouins to sell to the scholars, with the understanding that they would return the scrolls to the government after they had published the material.

Now, after the Israeli seizure of the scroll, the Bedouins -- who received no payment for the Temple scroll -- no longer trust Kondo or the scholars. It is believed they still possess some 20 scrolls from the 1956 Cave 11 excavation, said Cross. These, and any more they find, will probably be sold on the open market, where they may earn 10 times more money than they would have through the old channel system, where the Jordanian government set a reasonable price and imprisoned those caught selling to anyone who would remove the scrolls from the country.

"Since 99 per cent of the findings are in fragments," said Cross, "it is essential that the scrolls be kept in one place so they can be pieced together." The Jordanian government deposited all the scrolls in the Palestine Museum in Old Jerusalem, an international institution founded with Rockefeller funds.

The finds at Qumran, most of which date from the first century B.C., are early versions of the Old Testament. The complete Old Testament--except the Book of Esther, which was not written at the time, is found among the Dead Sea scrolls, said Cross.

"The scrolls precipitate us back into the period before the fixing of the Biblical text," he continued. "Once the text was stabilized during the first century A.D., it became impossible to tell what was the original material and what was edited. But with these earlier documents, we can reconstruct a chronological development of the text and write the history of the Bible."

The Dead Sea scrolls provide information other than textual history of the Bible. All the scrolls from the first century B.C. are ruins from the library of the Essene Jews. According to Cross, these were the "leftists" of the first century B.C., who lived with the certainty that at any moment "the angels of God, the heavenly host, would fight the final battle with Satan and his forces" and the Messianic Age would be realized.

They set a place for the Messiah at every meal, and, anticipating the divine way of life, they shared all their goods. Some refused to marry because they saw no need for marriage in a divine world.

Important for both Christian and Jewish history, however, is the similarity between the Essene rights and early Christian rituals. The Essenes had a sacramental meal which included the eating of the "feast of leviathan" and closely parallels the Lord's supper and the Eucharist rite. Even the symbol of the rite--a fish--is the same for both groups. Essenes and Christians both called themselves the "People of the New Covenant," thus the scrolls not only explain the Old Testament, but provide insight into the New one.

Cross was a member of the international team of Biblical scholars who worked on Cave 4, the most prolific Qumran cave explored so far by professionals.

"Westerners usually don't uncover very many scrolls," he said, because they cannot tolerate the climate. "It's 120 every day," he explained, "and we just can't stay there very long." The results of Cross' investigation in Cave 4 will be published within the next few months