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These items were on display in the exhibit at the Library of Congress, May - August 1993. Images of these objects are not included in the online version of the exhibit, but these exhibit captions are included to provide some additional background on the scholarly work surrounding the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Qumran Community, and its Library.
In 1883, M.H. Shapira, a Jerusalem antiquities dealer, offered to sell fragments of an ancient manuscript of the biblical book of Deuteronomy. On examination by leading scholars of the day, the manuscripts were found to be forgeries. Disgraced and humiliated, Shapira committed suicide in 1884.
In view of the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, some contemporary scholars have suggested that the Shapira fragments bear at least a surface resemblance to the Qumran manuscripts and have advocated re-examining their authenticity. Unfortunately, the Shapira fragments were sold at auction in 1885 and have since disappeared.
M.H. Shapira's daughter Myriam penned a thinly veiled fictionalized account of the scandal from the point of view of a devoted daughter. Serialized in France under the title of "La petite fille de Jerusalem," it was then translated into English as "The Little Daughter of Jerusalem" and published in New York and London.
In "The Shapira Affair," John Allegro, a leading scholar of the Dead Sea Scrolls and a member of the original scroll team, examined reproductions of the Shapira fragments in light of their resemblance to the Qumran documents.
John Marco Allegro
The Shapira Affair (Garden City, New York, 1965)
Printed book
General Collections, Library of Congress (133)
Myriam Harry
"La petite fille de Jerusalem,"
La Petite Illustration ([Paris] 1914)
Unbound serial
General Collections, Library of Congress (136)
Myriam Harry
The Little Daughter of Jerusalem (New York, 1919)
Printed book
General Collections, Library of Congress (137)
Scholar and educator Solomon Schechter's discovery in 1896 of a sectarian document--which turned out to be a medieval version of the Damascus Document--among the Cairo Genizah trove was first published in 1910 as "Fragments of a Zadokite Work." Displayed here is a reprint of this first Dead Sea Scroll publication, published 37 years before the discovery.
Solomon Schechter
Documents of Jewish Sectaries (New York, 1970)
Printed book
General Collections, Library of Congress (142)
The first scholar to associate the Qumran community with the Essenes was Hebrew University Professor E.L. Sukenik. In this 1948 publication, Professor Sukenik wrote:
Whose cache [of documents] this is still requires investigation. But I found a clue that leads me to a hypothesis. When I examined the scrolls held by the Assyrians, I found in one of them a kind of book of regulations for the behavior of members of a sect or community. I am inclined to suggest that this hidden cache is from the Essene sect, which, as is known from the ancient sources, resided on the western shore of the Dead Sea, in the vicinity of Ein Gedi.
Eleazar Lipa Sukenik
Megillot Genuzot (Jerusalem, 1949)
Printed book, photograph of the War Rule Scroll
Hebraic Section, African and Middle Eastern Division, Library of
Congress (125)
Written by Baltimore Hebrew University scholar Joseph Baumgarten, this 1992 imprint includes an analysis of the Damascus Document and its relation to Jewish Law, or "halakhah."
Joseph M. Baumgarten
"The Laws of the Damascus Document in Current Research"
The Damascus Document Reconsidered, Magen Broshi, ed. (Jerusalem,
1992)
Printed book
General Collections, Library of Congress (157)
In the early 1950s, Professor Solomon Zeitlin of Dropsie University in Philadelphia argued strenuously--on philological grounds--that the antiquity of the Dead Sea Scrolls should be rejected. Subsequent carbon-14 tests on their linen wrappers firmly dated the finds to the late Second Temple Period and laid to rest arguments concerning the antiquity of the scrolls.
Solomon Zeitlin
The Dead Sea Scrolls and Modern Scholarship (Philadelphia, 1956)
Printed book
Hebraic Section, African and Middle Eastern Division, Library of
Congress (129)
The Dead Sea Scrolls were first displayed in the United States at the Library of Congress in October 1949. The scrolls belonged to Mar Athanasius Yeshua Samuel, the head of the Syrian Jacobite Monastery of St. Mark in Jerusalem. In 1954, he placed an advertisement in "The Wall Street Journal" offering "The Four Dead Sea Scrolls" for sale. Purchased for the State of Israel by archaeologist Yigael Yadin, these scrolls are housed today in The Shrine of the Book in Jerusalem.
LC and the Dead Sea Scrolls
Newsreel 16mm print
Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division,
Library of Congress (183)
Mar Athansius Yeshua Samuel's account of his purchase of the scrolls is related in his "Treasure of Qumran." The volume is opened to a photograph of the Library of Congress exhibition in October 1949, showing Mar Samuel with then Librarian of Congress Luther Evans.
Athanasius Yeshua Samuel
Treasure of Qumran (London, 1968)
Printed book
General Collections, Library of Congress (141)
Alvin Kremer, Keeper of the Collection at the Library of Congress, prepared the two memoranda shown here which document the arrival and departure of the scrolls in 1949, and describe the precautions taken to safeguard the artifacts.
Alvin W. Kremer to John G. L. Andreassen
"Report on travel to obtain the
Hebrew Scrolls" (October 24, 1949)
Memorandum
Manuscript Division, Library of Congress (155)
Alvin W. Kremer to John C.L. Andreassen
"Travel to deliver the Hebrew Scrolls to
the Walters Gallery" (November 7, 1949)
Memorandum
Manuscript Division, Library of Congress (156)
The Dead Sea Scrolls have been translated into scores of languages. Displayed here are books that include scroll translations in Yiddish, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Arabic, Japanese, and Indonesian.
S. Glassman
Megiles fun Yam ha-Maylekh (New York, 1965)
Printed book
Hebraic Section, African and Middle Eastern Division, Library of
Congress (120)
Iosif Davidovich Amusin
Rukopisi Mertvoga Morya (Moscow, 1960)
Printed book
General Collections, Library of Congress (149)
Eugen Verber
Kumranski Rukopisi (Beograd, 1982)
Printed book
General Collections, Library of Congress (173)
M. al-Abidi
Makhtutat al-Bahr al Mayyit (Amman, 1967)
Printed book
Near East Section, African and Middle Eastern Division, Library
of Congress (174)
Shikai bunsho (Tokyo, 1963)
Printed book
Japanese Section, Asian Division, Library of Congress (180)
Saleh A. Nahdi
Nafiri maut dari lembah Qamran (Djakarta, 1964)
Printed book
Southern Asian Section, Asian Division, Library of Congress (181)
Included among the Apocrypha, Ecclesiasticus extols wisdom and ethical conduct. A Hebrew version of the book, which was known only in Greek after the tenth century, was discovered by Solomon Schechter in the Cairo Genizah in the late nineteenth century. Fragments of the original Hebrew version were discovered in Cave 2.
Displayed here are Greek (from the Septuagint), and Latin versions of Ecclesiasticus from the second of the great polyglot Bibles, the "Antwerp" or "Plantin" Polyglot.
Ecclesiasticus
[Plantin's Polyglot] (Antwerp, 1569-1572)
Printed book, volume 3
Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress
(179)
In September 1992, "Time Magazine" published an article on the War Rule fragment displayed here (object no. 12) exploring the differing interpretations. A "piercing messiah" reading would support the traditional Jewish view of a triumphant messiah. If, on the other hand, the fragment were interpreted as speaking of a "pierced messiah," it would anticipate the New Testament view of the preordained death of the messiah. The scholarly basis for these differing interpretations--but not their theological ramifications--are reviewed in "A Pierced or Piercing Messiah?"
Richard N. Ostling
"Is Jesus in the Dead Sea Scrolls?"
Time (September 21, 1992)
Unbound serial
Hebraic Section, African and Middle Eastern Division, Library of
Congress (187)
James D. Tabor
"A Pierced or Piercing Messiah?--The Verdict is Still Out"
Biblical Archaeology Review 18 (November-December 1992)
Unbound Serial
Hebraic Section, African and Middle Eastern Division, Library of
Congress (188)
Reacting to the official team's slow pace of scholarly publication of the Dead Sea Scrolls, two Hebrew Union College scholars developed a computer program that reconstructed Cave 4 texts from a decades-old concordance. Soon thereafter, the Huntington Library announced in the fall of 1991 that it would make available to scholars photographic copies of the scrolls that had been deposited in its vaults. Displayed here is the first part of the reconstruction.
Ben Zion Wacholder and Martin Abegg
A Preliminary Edition of the Unpublished Dead Sea Scrolls
(Washington, 1991)
Printed book
Hebraic Section, African and Middle Eastern Division, Library of
Congress (128)
This "sychronological" chart, compiled by Sebastian C. Adams, is a sweeping examination of biblical history. Printed by Stobridge & Co. of Cincinnati, Adam's time line went through at least ten editions attesting to its enormous popularity. Adam's explained the structure:
The stream of time is represented by the long black flowing line from left to right. The end of each hundred years is marked by the upright black pillars. . . The Nations and Kingdoms are represented by parallel streams . . . . When conquered or absorbed into another government, its stream terminates.
An "Explanation of the Plan of the Chart" is located at the top of panel 8, which depicts the early history of Christianity. The ancient sources consulted by Adams included Flavius Josephus, Pliny the Elder, Eusebius, and Origen--historians whose works are cited in this exhibition.
Sebastian C. Adams
A Chronological Chart of Ancient and Modern Biblical History,
third edition (Cincinnati, 1898)
Chromo-lithograph, the first nine panels of twelve
Geography and Map Division, Library of Congress (191)
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