Prophets…’14 Later, the ‘Community Rule’ states that anyone who ‘transgresses one word of the Law of Moses, on any point whatever, shall be expelled’15 and that the Law will endure ‘for as long as the domain of Satan endures’.16 In his rigorous adherence to the Law, Jesus, strikingly enough, is much closer to the Qumran texts than he is to Paul. In the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5:17-19), Jesus makes his position unequivocally clear — a position that Paul was subsequently to betray:
Do not imagine that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets. I have come not to abolish but to complete them. I tell you solemnly… not one dot, not one little stroke, shall disappear from the Law until its purpose is achieved. Therefore, the man who infringes even one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be considered the least in the kingdom of heaven…
If Jesus’ adherence to the Law concurs with that of the Qumran community, so, too, does his timing of the Last Supper. For centuries, biblical commentators have been confused by apparently conflicting accounts in the Gospels. In Matthew (26:17-19), the Last Supper is depicted as a Passover meal, and Jesus is crucified the next day. In the Fourth Gospel (13:1 and 18:28), however, it is said to occur
Certainly the Qumran community observed a feast which sounds very similar in its ritual characteristics to the Last Supper as it is described in the Gospels. The ‘Community Rule’ states that ‘when the table has been prepared… the Priest shall be the first to stretch out his hand to bless the first-fruits of the bread and new wine’.18 And another Qumran text, the ‘Messianic Rule’, adds: ‘they shall gather for the common table, to eat and to drink new wine… let no man extend his hand over the first fruits of bread and wine before the Priest… thereafter, the Messiah of Israel shall extend his hand over the bread’.19
This text was sufficient to convince even Rome. According to Cardinal Jean Danielou, writing with a ‘Nihil Obstat’ from the Vatican: ‘Christ must have celebrated the last supper on the eve of Easter according to the Essenian calendar.’20
One can only imagine the reaction of Father de Vaux and his team on first discovering the seemingly extraordinary parallels between the Qumran texts and what was known of ‘early Christianity’. It had hitherto been believed that Jesus’ teachings were unique — that he admittedly drew on Old Testament sources, but wove his references into a message, a gospel, a statement of’good news’ which had never been enunciated in the world before. Now, however, echoes of that message, and perhaps even of Jesus’ drama itself, had come to light among a collection of ancient parchments preserved in the Judaean desert.
To an agnostic historian, or even to an undogmatic Christian, such a discovery would have been exciting indeed. It probably would have been with a certain sacred awe that one handled documents actually dating from the days when Jesus and his followers walked the sands of ancient Palestine, trudging between Galilee and Judaea. One would undoubtedly, and with something of a frisson, have felt closer to Jesus himself. The sketchy details of Jesus’ drama and milieu would have broken free from the print to which they had been confined for twenty centuries — would have assumed density, texture, solidity. The Dead Sea Scrolls were not like a modern book expounding a controversial thesis; they would comprise first-hand evidence, buttressed by the sturdy struts of 20th-century science and scholarship. Even for a non-believer, however, some question of moral responsibility would have arisen. Whatever his own scepticism, could he, casually and at a single stroke, undermine the faith to which millions clung for solace and consolation? For de Vaux and his colleagues, working as representatives of the Roman Catholic Church, it must have seemed as though they were handling the spiritual and religious equivalent of dynamite — something that might just conceivably demolish the entire edifice of Christian teaching and belief.
9. The Scrolls
It is not feasible or relevant in this book to list all the texts known to have been found at Qumran, or even to have been translated and published. Many of them are of interest solely to specialists. Many of them consist of nothing more than small fragments, whose context and significance cannot now be reconstructed. A substantial number of them are commentaries on various books of the Old Testament, as well as on other Judaic works known as apocrypha and pseudepigrapha. But it is worth at this point noting a few of the Qumran documents which contain material of special relevance — and two in particular which will prove not only most illuminating, but most controversial indeed.
Found in the Qumran cave designated number 3, the ‘Copper Scroll’ simply lists, in the dry fashion of an inventory, sixty-four sites where a treasure of gold, silver and precious religious vessels is alleged to have been hidden. Many of the sites are in Jerusalem proper, some of them under or adjacent to the Temple. Others are in the surrounding countryside, perhaps as far afield as Qumran itself. If the figures in the scroll are accurate, the total weight of the various scattered caches amounts to sixty-five tons of silver and twenty-six tons of gold, which would be worth some ?30 million at today’s prices. It is not a particularly staggering sum as such things go — a sunken Spanish treasure galleon, for example, would fetch far more – but not many people would turn their noses up at it; and the religious and symbolic import of such a treasure would place it, of course, beyond all monetary value. Although this was not publicised when the contents of the scroll were originally revealed, the text clearly establishes that the treasure derived from the Temple — whence it was removed and secreted, presumably to protect it from the invading Romans. One can therefore conclude that the ‘Copper Scroll’ dates from the time of the Roman invasion in ad 68. As we have noted, certain members of the international team, such as Professor Cross and the former Father Milik, deemed the treasure to be wholly fictitious. Most independent scholars now concur, however, that it did exist. Nevertheless, the depositories have proved impossible to find. The directions, sites and landmarks involved are indicated by local names long since lost; and the general configuration and layout of the area has, in the course of two thousand years and endless wars, changed beyond all recognition.
In 1988, however, a discovery was made just to the north of the cave in which the ‘Copper Scroll’ was found. Here, in another cave, three feet or so below the present surface, a small jug was exhumed, dating from the time of Herod and his immediate successors. The jug had clearly been regarded as very valuable, and had been concealed with extreme care, wrapped in a protective cover of palm fibres. It proved to contain a thick red oil which, according to chemical analysis, is unlike any oil known today. This oil is generally believed to be balsam oil — a precious commodity reported to have been produced nearby, at Jericho, and traditionally used to anoint Israel’s rightful kings.1 The matter cannot be definitively established, however, because the balsam tree has been extinct for some fifteen hundred years.
If the oil is indeed balsam oil, it may well be part of the treasure stipulated in the ‘Copper Scroll’. In any case, it is an incongruously costly commodity to have been used by a community of supposedly isolated ascetics in the desert. As we have noted, however, one of the most important features of the ‘Copper Scroll’ is that it shows Qumran not to have been so isolated after all. On the contrary, it would seem to establish links between the Qumran community and factions associated with the Temple in Jerusalem.
