NEW YORK — Once they were thought to be the most explosive religious documents in history, possibly containing secrets that would threaten the known origins of rabbinic Judaism and Christianity.
Some had whispered that the Vatican and Jewish leaders had pressured the small band of scholars who controlled the ancient texts for most of the 20th century never to reveal their contents to the public.
But 54 years after they were discovered in caves in the Judean Desert, some 25 miles from Jerusalem, all of the so-called “Dead Sea Scrolls” are about to become available for the first time.
The final two volumes of a 38-volume set featuring the oldest versions of the Hebrew Bible are expected to be published within the next two months.
And despite all the years of controversy, rumor and scandal surrounding the 2,000-year-old documents, there doesn’t seem to be any bombshells threatening the basics of Judaism or Christianity.
Or are there?
It all depends on your point of view, several Dead Sea Scroll scholars said last week at a ceremony celebrating the long-awaited completion of the scrolls’ publication in a series by Oxford University Press.
Those who advocate Jewish pluralism will find evidence. Those who advocate the continuity of Jewish practice after thousands of years can also find comfort.
Officials from the Israel Antiquities Authority had gathered at the dark-wood-paneled Trustees Room of the New York Public Library for a press conference to tell the world that indeed, the hundreds of partial scrolls and text fragments that had been fought over all these years by scholars were now easily accessible in book form under the title “Discoveries in the Judean Desert.” They will also be available soon on DVD.
In fact, Professor Emmanuel Tov, editor-in-chief of an international committee on the Dead Sea Scrolls, explained it was the advent of new technologies such as e-mail and laser scanning that allowed him to work so quickly.
Under Tov, 28 volumes of the ancient materials have been published between 1992 and 2001 — nine years — compared to only eight volumes published in the 35 years between 1955 and 1990.
“Modern technology was very important to our team,” said Tov, who became chief editor 11 years ago at the height of the controversy over scholarly access to the texts. “E-mail was absolutely necessary, and I could not have done this in 10 years without e-mail.”
Also crucial in speeding up publication was the use of digital photography and multispectral imaging, which enabled scholars to fill in missing letters on scraps of papyrus, and thus, like a jigsaw puzzle, allowing them to reassemble the biblical and community documents dating from 250 BCE to 70 C.E.
Equally as important, Tov said, was his expansion of the team of scholars allowed to work on the texts.
For nearly 40 years, only about 10 scholars — none Jewish — were permitted on the official team to study and interpret the ancient Jewish writings. But Tov appointed nearly 100 scholars from around the world, including Jewish and Israeli scholars, to analyze and make sense of the fragments, mostly written in Hebrew and Aramaic, with some also found in Latin and Greek.
The Jewish scholars helped recover the essential Jewishness of the texts after decades of their Christianization by non-Jewish academics, Tov said.
Hundreds of scroll fragments — some as big as a thumbnail — and also larger partial scrolls were found near the Dead Sea in 11 caves near the ruins of an ancient settlement called Qumran. The cache features prayers, rituals and codes of behavior for an insular Jewish sect, probably the Essenes, who lived in the desert at Qumran.
About 200 texts contain the earliest known biblical writings, and every book but Esther is represented. No new books of the Hebrew Bible were ever found.
“After 54 years of excitement, expectation, tribulation, much criticism and a little praise, with the help of inspiration and even more perspiration, publication has been finalized,” Tov proclaimed last week.
But in the end, what is their significance for Jews and others?
Tov said the scrolls for the first time allow modern scholars to read “a broad spectrum of writings from all of ancient Israel, reflecting the literature of Israel between the third century BCE and the mid-first century.”
The scrolls, he said, confirm the evolutionary nature of the Torah, showing there were additions, subtractions and other editing changes during its formation.
One of the most significant findings is the differences and number of alternative Hebrew Bibles used during the Second Temple period compared with the one accepted version used by Jews since the early rabbis finalized the canon.
The scrolls have also helped explain the function of prayer during this period when Jews were still called to sacrifice animals at the altar of the Temple.
Interestingly, the Qumran sect instituted communal prayers at a fixed time corresponding to the hours of Temple sacrifice — twice daily, early morning and later afternoon at sunset. Prayers were also said on the Sabbath and festivals.
But Qumran used a solar calendar, not the lunar calendar used in Jerusalem, so its holidays came out at different times.
The multiplicity of Jewish religious practices shows that the traditional view of a monolithic Judaism during the Second Temple period is incorrect. Judaism had its varied denominations even back then.
“It shows you how times don’t change,” said Professor Lawrence Schiffman, a Dead Sea Scrolls scholar and chairman of the department of Hebrew and Judaic studies at New York University. “We used to think everything was so much simpler in those days, but they were as complicated as our days.”
Schiffman said perhaps the most significant contribution of the scrolls is the filling in of the missing historical gap between the Bible and the Mishnah, the earliest writings of the Talmud.
Those who believe that every letter of the Torah was given by God to Moses unchanged throughout history, Schiffman said, are going to have problems with proof of different but valid biblical texts found at Qumran.
On the other hand, Schiffman notes that the early rabbis had acknowledged that history of multiple texts before settling on one. In the end, he said, the significance of the ancient texts comes down to how one wants to understand the findings of the scrolls.
“There is no one unidirectional message that it’s all true or all false,” said Schiffman. “It’s all complex.”
Tov at the library press conference dedicated a Hebrew scroll of thanksgiving found in Qumran to New York to commemorate heroism in response to the Sept. 11 destruction of the World Trade Center.
“The scrolls are of enormous historical value not only to scholars but to those of us who feel that history is prologue,” said Richard Sheirer, director of the mayor’s Office of Emergency Management, accepting the scroll on behalf of the city.
The presentation in New York City of the writings from a sect of fundamentalist religious believers from the Middle East who lived in caves and believed the world was coming to an end 2,000 years ago was indeed striking.