attic. On the basis not of its content, but of its script alone, one might guess it to date from the 17th as opposed to the 18th century. To that extent, one would be practising a species of amateur palaeography. The procedure, needless to say, even when employed with the most scientific rigour, is far from conclusive. When applied to the texts found at Qumran, it becomes feeble indeed — and sometimes tips over into the ludicrous. Nevertheless, de Vaux invoked palaeography as another corpus of external evidence to discredit the conclusions, based on internal evidence, of Roth and Driver. It was, therefore, the alleged palaeographical evidence pertaining to Qumran that Eisenman had next to demolish.

Palaeography, according to Frank Cross of the international team, ‘is perhaps the most precise and objective means of determining the age of a manuscript’. He goes on to explain:

we must approach the problems relating to the historical interpretation of our texts by first determining the time period set by archaeological data, by paleographical evidence, and by other more objective methods before applying the more subjective techniques of internal criticism.32

Why internal evidence should necessarily be more ‘subjective’ than that of archaeology and palaeography Cross does not bother to clarify. In fact, this statement inadvertently reveals why palaeography should be deemed so important by adherents of the consensus: it can be used to counter the internal evidence of the documents — evidence which makes sense only in the context of the 1st century AD.

The most prominent palaeographical work on the Dead Sea Scrolls was done by Professor Solomon Birnbaum of the University of London’s School of Oriental Studies. Birnbaum’s endeavours received fulsome endorsement from Professor Cross, who hailed them as ‘a monumental attempt to deal with all periods of Hebrew writing’.33 Attempting to parry the copious criticism to which Birnbaum’s exegesis was subjected, Cross asked his readers to remember ‘that it was written by a professional paleographer tried to the limit by the Lilliputian attacks of non-specialists’.34 Such is the intensity of academic vituperation generated by the question of palaeographical evidence.

Birnbaum’s method is bizarre to say the least, reminiscent less of the modern scientific method with which he purports to dignify it than of, say, the nether reaches of numerology. Thus, for example, he presupposes — and the whole of his subsequent procedure rests on nothing more than this unconfirmed presupposition — that the entire spectrum of the texts found at Qumran extends precisely from 300 bc to ad 68. Thus, in one instance, he takes a text of Samuel found in Cave 4 at Qumran. Having methodically combed this text, he cites forty-five specimens of a particular calligraphic feature, eleven specimens of another. ‘Mit der Dummheit’, Schiller observed, ‘kampfen Gotter selbst vergeben.’ For reasons the gods themselves must find mind-boggling, Birnbaum then proceeds to set up an equation: the proportion of 56 to 11 equals 368 to x (368 being the number of years the texts span, and x being the date he hopes to assign to the text in question). The value of x — calculated, legitimately enough, in purely mathematical terms — is 72, which should then be subtracted from 300 bc, Birnbaum’s hypothetical starting point. He arrives at 228 BC; ‘the result’, he claims triumphantly, ‘will be something like the absolute date’ for the Samuel manuscript.35 To speak of ‘something like’ an ‘absolute date’ is rather like speaking of ‘a relatively absolute date’. But quite apart from such stylistic solecisms, Birnbaum’s method, as Eisenman says, ‘is, of course, preposterous’.36 Nevertheless, Birnbaum employed his technique, such as it was, to establish ‘absolute dates’ for all the texts discovered at Qumran. The most alarming fact of all is that adherents of the consensus still accept these ‘absolute dates’ as unimpugnable.

Professor Philip Davies of Sheffield states that ‘most people who take time to study the issue agree that the use of paleography in Qumran research is unscientific’, adding that ‘attempts have been made to offer a precision of dating that is ludicrous’.37 Eisenman is rather more scathing, describing Birnbaum’s endeavours as ‘what in any other field would be the most pseudo-scientific and infantile methods’.38 To illustrate this, he provides the following example.39

Suppose two scribes of different ages are copying the same text at the same time, and the younger scribe were trained more recently in a more up-to-date ‘scribal school’? Suppose the older scribe were deliberately using a stylised calligraphy which he’d learned in his youth? Suppose either or both scribes, in deference to tradition or the hallowed character of their activity, sought deliberately to replicate a style dating from some centuries before — as certain documents today, such as diplomas or certificates of award, may be produced in archaic copper-plate? What date could possibly be assigned definitively to their transcriptions?

In his palaeographic assumptions, Birnbaum overlooked one particularly important fact. If a document is produced merely to convey information, it will, in all probability, reflect the most up-to-date techniques. Such, for example, are the techniques employed by modern newspapers (except, until recently, in England). But everything suggests that the Dead Sea Scrolls weren’t produced merely to convey information. Everything suggests they had a ritual or semi-ritual function as well, and were lovingly produced so as to preserve an element of tradition. It is therefore highly probable that later scribes would deliberately attempt to reproduce the style of their predecessors. And, indeed, all through recorded history, scribes have consistently been conservative. Thus, for example, illuminated manuscripts of the Middle Ages contrived to reflect a sacred quality of antiquity, not the latest technological progress. Thus many modern Bibles are reproduced in ‘old-fashioned’ print. Thus one would not expect to find a modern Jewish Torah employing the style or technique used to imprint a slogan on a T-shirt.

Of the calligraphy in the Dead Sea Scrolls, Eisenman concludes that ‘they simply represent a multitude of different handwriting styles of people working more or less at the same time within the same framework, and tell us nothing about chronology at all’.40 Cecil Roth of Oxford was, if anything, even more emphatic: ‘In connection for example with the English records, although a vast mass of dated manuscript material exists covering the entire Middle Ages, it is impossible to fix precisely within the range of a generation the date of any document on the basis of palaeography alone.’ He warned that ‘a new dogmatism’ had arisen in the field of palaeography, and that ‘without any fixed point to serve as a basis, we are already expected to accept as an historical criterion a precise dating of these hitherto unknown Hebrew scripts’. He even, in his exasperation at the complacency and intransigence of the international team, had recourse to the unscholarly expedient of capital letters:

IT MUST BE STATED HERE ONCE AND FOR ALL THAT THE SO-CALLED PALAEOGRAPHICAL EVIDENCE IS WHOLLY INADMISSIBLE IN THIS DISCUSSION.41

11. The Essenes

The reader by now will be familiar with the conclusions of the consensus view of the international team and, as expressed through its journals, the Ecole Biblique, as well as with the processes by which those conclusions were reached. It is now time to return to the evidence and see whether any alternative conclusions are possible. In order to do so, certain basic questions must again be posed. Who, precisely, were the elusive and mysterious denizens of Qumran, who established their community, transcribed and deposited their sacred texts, then apparently vanished from the stage of history? Were they indeed Essenes? And if so, what exactly does that term mean?

The traditional images of the Essenes come down to us from Pliny, Philo and Josephus, who described them as a sect or sub-sect of 1st-century Judaism.1 Pliny, as we have seen, depicted the Essenes as celibate hermits, residing, with ‘only palm-trees for company’, in an area that might be construed as Qumran. Josephus, who is echoed by Philo, elaborates on this portrait. According to Josephus, the Essenes are celibate — although, he adds, almost as an afterthought, ‘there is a second order of Essenes’ who do marry.2 The Essenes despise pleasure and wealth. They hold all possessions in common, and those who join their ranks must renounce private property. They elect their own leaders from amongst themselves. They are settled in every city of Palestine, as well as in isolated communities, but, even in urban surroundings, keep themselves apart.

Josephus portrays the Essenes as something akin to a monastic order or an ancient mystery school. Postulants to their ranks are subjected to a three-year period of probation, the equivalent of a novitiate. Not until he has successfully undergone this apprenticeship is the candidate officially accepted. Full-fledged Essenes pray before

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