Religion: Out of the Desert

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Time-Defying Leap. Next, the fragments are sorted according to script and (if possible) scribe. The mutations of Hebrew and Aramaic letters are classifiable by date—this science of paleography is, in fact, the most exact way of dating the scrolls. Each scribe, too, had his own characteristic handwriting ("ductus"), and a shred of personality makes a time-defying leap across the centuries when a scroll scholar recognizes the mannerisms of an Essene scribe who worked at a long table not unlike his own, 20 miles away and 2,000 years ago. In addition to matching up the script, it is also sometimes possible to match fragments according to the material on which they are written: the leather scrolls were treated on only one side, making it possible to match the rough, untreated side of the skin.

Next the fragments are classified as to whether they are Biblical or nonBiblical. Even a single word with a few letters of the words preceding and following it may be identified in this way by consulting a concordance which lists every word in the Bible in its immediate context. Noncanonical works from the Apocrypha and unknown writings of the Qumran sect are identified more slowly by their use of key words and characteristic phrases.

Black Market in Scrolls? The study of the fragments has had a stunning impact upon both Jewish and Christian Biblical scholarship. Not only do they provide a wealth of script samples from different eras to advance the science of paleography by a giant step; they provide a far earlier authority for the text of the Old Testament than had been available. The Old Testament is based on the so-called Masoretic text (from masora, tradition) developed in the 7th, 8th and 9th centuries A.D. by the schools of Babylonia and Palestine. Older than the Masoretic Bible is the Septuagint, a pre-Christian Greek translation which has been thought to be less authoritative than the Masoretic because of the difficulties of translating Hebrew terms into Greek. The Biblical manuscripts from Cave 4, yielding some texts far earlier than either, have considerably raised the prestige of the Septuagint.

Curreatly, the scholars at Jerusalem are preoccupied with the worldly question of how and whom to pay for more fragments. While the largest single gift of money came from the Jordanian government under the old informal system much of the money for the Bedouin suppliers came from foreign foundations and universities that expected to keep the fragments after the scholars were done with their first studies. Now Jordan's nationalist government wants to abolish this system, keep all the manuscripts in the country but still get the money, either for the Bedouins or for itself. While negotiations are going on, scholars of the Scrollery suffer from a recurrent nightmare: that the Bedouins may stop bringing their finds to the cobbler shop of Khalil Iskander, and take them to a black market instead (no more than three or four small fragments have so far turned up for private sale by antique dealers around the world).