The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception

The international team’s stranglehold, he realised, could not be broken solely through decorous or even strident protests in learned journals. It would be necessary to bring external pressure to bear, preferably from above. Accordingly, Eisenman met and briefed Professor Ne’eman, and Ne’eman then forced the issue in the Knesset.

Later that year, Eisenman himself approached Father Benoit, and verbally requested access to the scrolls. Predictably enough, Benoit politely refused, adroitly suggesting that Eisenman should ask the Israeli authorities, and implying that the decision was not his to make. At this point, Eisenman was still unaware of the stratagems employed by the international team to thwart all applicants who wanted access to the scrolls. He was not, however, prepared to be excluded so easily.

All scholars during their tenure on the staff of the Albright Institute give one lecture to the general public. Eisenman’s lecture was scheduled for February 1986, and he chose as his subject ‘The Jerusalem Community and Qumran’, with the provocative subtitle ‘Problems in Archaeology, Palaeography, History, and Chronology’. As in the case of his book on James, the title itself was calculated to strike a nerve. In accordance with custom, the Albright Institute sent invitations to all important scholars in the field in Jerusalem, and it was a matter of courtesy for sister institutions, like the French Ecole Biblique, to be represented. Five or six turned up, a higher number than usual.

Since they were unfamiliar with Eisenman and his work, they may not have expected anything out of the ordinary. Gradually, however, their complacency began to crumble, and they listened to his arguments in silence.[2] They declined to ask any questions at the end of the lecture, leaving without extending the usual courtesy of congratulations. For the first time, it had become apparent to them that in Eisenman they faced a serious challenge. True to form, they ignored it, in the hope, presumably, that it would go away.

The following spring, one of Eisenman’s friends and colleagues, Professor Philip Davies of Sheffield University, arrived in Jerusalem for a short stay. He and Eisenman went to discuss with Magen Broshi, director of the Shrine of the Book, their desire to see the unpublished scroll fragments still sequestered by the international team. Broshi laughed at what apparently struck him as a vain hope: ‘You will not see these things in your lifetime,’ he said.²² In June, towards the end of his stay in Jerusalem, Eisenman was invited to tea at the house of a colleague, a professor at the Hebrew University who would later become a member of the Israeli ‘Scroll Oversight Committee’. Again he took Davies with him. A number of other academics, including Joseph Baumgarten of Baltimore Hebrew College, were present, and early in the evening John Strugnell — Allegro’s old adversary and subsequently the head of the international team — made his appearance. Boisterous and apparently intent on confrontation, he began to complain about ‘unqualified people’ importunately demanding access to the Qumran material. Eisenman responded on cue. How did Strugnell define ‘qualified’? Was he himself ‘qualified’? Aside from his supposed skills in analysing handwriting, did he know anything about history? Ostensibly, it was all a half-joking, more or less ‘civilised’ debate, but it was growing ominously personal.

The next year, 1986-7, Eisenman spent at Oxford, as Senior Scholar at the Oxford Centre for Postgraduate Hebrew Studies and visiting Member of Linacre College. Through contacts in Jerusalem, he had been given two secret documents. One was a copy of a scroll on which Strugnell was working, part of his ‘private fiefdom’. This text, written apparently by a leader of the ancient Qumran community and outlining a number of the community’s governing precepts, is known by those in the field as the ‘MMT’ document. Strugnell had shown it around at the 1985 conference, but had not published it.²³ (Nor has he yet, though the entire text comes to a mere 121 lines.)

The second document was of more contemporary significance. It comprised a computer print-out, or list, of all Qumran texts in the hands of the international team.²⁴ What made it particularly important was that the international team had repeatedly denied that any such print-out or list existed. Here was definitive proof that vast quantities of material had not yet been published and were being suppressed.

Eisenman had no hesitation about what to do:

Since I had decided that one of the main problems between scholars, which had created this whole situation in the first place, was over-protectiveness and jealously guarded secrecy, I decided to circulate anything that came into my hands without conditions. This was the service I could render; plus, it would undermine the international cartel or monopoly of such documents.²⁵

Eisenman accordingly made available a copy of the ‘MMT’ document to anyone who expressed a desire to see it. These copies apparently circulated like wildfire, so much so that a year and a half later he received one back again from a third party who asked if he had seen it. He could tell by certain notations that this was one of the copies that he had originally allowed to circulate.

The print-out, like the ‘MMT’ document, was duly circulated, producing precisely the effect Eisenman had anticipated. He made a particular point of sending a copy of it to Hershel Shanks of BAR, thus providing the journal with ammunition to renew its campaign.

By this time, needless to say, Eisenman’s relations with the international team were deteriorating. On the surface, of course, each maintained with the other a respectable academic demeanour of frosty civility. They could not, after all, publicly attack him for his actions, which had been manifestly disinterested, manifestly in the name of scholarship. But the rift was widening between them; and it wasn’t long before a calculated attempt was made to freeze him out.

In January 1989, Eisenman visited Amir Drori, the newly appointed director of the Israeli Department of Antiquities. Drori inadvertently reported to Eisenman that he was about to sign an agreement with the team’s new chief editor, John Strugnell. According to this agreement, the team’s monopoly would be retained. The previous deadline for publication, accepted by Father Benoit, Strugnell’s predecessor, was to be abrogated. All remaining Qumran material was to be published not by 1993, but by 1996.²⁶

Eisenman was naturally appalled. Attempts to dissuade Drori, however, proved futile. Eisenman left the meeting determined to employ a new and more drastic stratagem. The only means of bringing pressure to bear on both the international team and on the Department of Antiquities, and perhaps stop Drori from proceeding with the contract, would be Israel’s High Court of Justice, which dealt with miscarriages of justice and private appeals from individuals.

Eisenman explored the question with lawyers. Yes, they concluded, the High Court might be persuaded to intervene. In order for it to do so, however, Eisenman would have to present it with proof of a miscarriage of justice; he would have to show, preferably in writing, that access to the scrolls by a legitimate scholar had been refused. At the time, no such record existed — not, at least, in the legalistic sense the Court would require. Other scholars had, of course, been refused access to the scrolls; but some of them were dead, others were scattered across the world, and there was none of the required documentation. Strugnell would therefore have to be approached with a series of new requests for access to specific materials — which, as a foregone conclusion, he would refuse. Now that Eisenman had the catalogue numbers, his task would be easier.

Not wishing to make this request alone, Eisenman felt it would be more impressive if he enlisted the support of others. He approached Philip Davies of Sheffield, who agreed to support him in what both recognised would be only the first shot of a prolonged engagement fought through the Israeli High Court. On 16 March 1989, the two professors submitted a formal letter to John Strugnell. They requested access to certain original fragments, and photographs of fragments, found at the Qumran site designated Cave 4, and listed in the computer print-out which Eisenman had leaked into circulation. In order to preclude any misunderstanding, they cited the reference numbers assigned by the print-out to the photographic negatives. They also requested access to a number of scroll commentaries, or commentary fragments, related to the primary text. They offered to pay all costs involved and promised not to publish any definitive transcription or translation of the material, which would be used only in their own research. They promised, too, to abide by all the normal procedures of copyright law.

In their letter, Eisenman and Davies acknowledged the time and energy expended over the years by the international team — but, they said, they felt the team had ‘already been adequately compensated’ by enjoying such long and exclusive access to the Qumran material. They stated that thirty-five to forty years was long enough for other scholars to have waited for similar access, without which ‘we can no longer make meaningful progress in