Dead Sea Scrolls Exhibit & Lecture

July 13, 2007 at 3:24 pm · Filed under New Testament Studies

On Monday I led a number of ministry members and friends on a trip to the San Diego Natural History Museum so that we could view the long awaited Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit. We had been waiting at least six months for the exhibit to open, which will be in San Diego from June 29-December 31 of this year. Needless to say the trip was amazing. The exhibit, which spanned two floors and 12,000 square feet, felt surprisingly small. Even so, it contained many fantastic pictures of the Qumran site, a handful of random artifacts (e.g., pots, plates, jars, a comb, a pair of sandals), a heavily biased time line of the religion of Israel (it doesn’t even mention the Exodus; most liberal scholars don’t consider it historical), and 27 scrolls from the Dead Sea collection – 10 exhibited for the first time ever!

I have seen the scrolls once before when they were on exhibit at the Field Museum in Chicago a few years back, but supposedly this is the most impressive display (outside of Israel) to date. Actually, the museum website is advertising that “The San Diego Natural History Museum’s exhibition Dead Sea Scrolls is the largest, longest, most comprehensive ever assembled in any country.” Well, the museum delivered on its promise. Among the most impressive aspects of the exhibit were the famed copper scroll (of which a leaf was on display for the first time ever outside of Israel), fragments of the the Damascus Document and the Community Scroll, an animated reconstruction of the caves themselves, and the lecture series.

I must say that the lecture was a bit of a let down. That isn’t to say that the speaker, Dr. Shalom Paul, wasn’t qualified or that I was surprised by what he said. Rather, I went in expecting a liberal perspective, though I hoped for the best, and got exactly what I thought I would. Bummer! He shared many insightful comments concerning the discovery of the scrolls and the state of Judaism in the Second Temple Period, but unfortunately dramatically overstated the influence of the scrolls and the Qumran community for the writing of the New Testament and the practices of the early church. For instance, Dr. Paul, who by the way is an Old Testament scholar (and author of the Amos commentary in the Hermeneia series), suggested that the title “sons of light” in John 12:36 and 1 Thess. 5:5 was borrowed from the Dead Sea Scrolls, since it has not been found in any ancient Jewish literature outside of Qumran. This is a quite a stretch, especially considering how far removed Paul’s Thessalonian audience was from Israel. They simply would not have understood the title if Paul was alluding to Qumran. They would have, however, clearly understood Paul’s use of imagery, because it is the idea is that intuitive. And as far as John goes, he uses light imagery repeatedly throughout his Gospel, letters, and apocalypse, so we don’t have to suggest that he borrowed the idea from Qumran just to explain its derivation. It is simply a favorite theme of his, and it communicates basic theological truths without having to resort to more challenging vocabulary, which is also a trademark of John.

Dr. Paul also suggested that the early church’s practice of communal meals was unattested in the ancient world, except for in Qumran. Thus it was adopted from the practice of the Essenes. Wow! That’s just not true. The communal meals practiced by the church stemmed from their ideology as a surrogate family (see Joseph H. Hellerman’s “The Ancient Church as Family”), which met in homes and over a meal, so as to allow them to commemorate the death of Christ as he prescribed through the Eucharist.

A final criticism of Dr. Paul’s lecture was that he communicated that the existence of different textual families of the Hebrew Bible suggests that the final form of the text wasn’t firmly established until well after the first century AD. This may actually be true. But, without blatantly stating that the differences between the textual families are great, he nevertheless left room for the audience to believe the differences were significant and leave us with a distorted text of the Old Testament. In reality, Old Testament textual critics repeatedly confirm that we are 99% certain of the original reading of the Old Testament text. The scrolls, although they differ on occasion from the Masoretic Text, actually testify to how well the text has been preserved over the span of 1200 or so years from the penning of the scrolls to the earliest extant MT copies (i.e., Aleppo & Leningrad Codices; a part of the latter by the way is on display at the museum in San Diego).

All in all, the trip was a great experience, and I am very pleased that Christin and I were able to go see the scrolls before our move. I am also pleased that a good number of our ministry participants took an interest in the scrolls and in their significance for Christianity. And even though they were exposed to some liberal ideas, I am glad that they were introduced to them when I was around to answer their questions afterward.

The night then ended over dinner with Robert & Laurie Cavin and David & Mindy Briones. This was the first time all six us have been able to hang out. Thankfully we were are able to make it, and even on the Briones’ anniversary! Happy anniversary to them, and we pray that their travels to the UK next Thursday go well.

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