Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls

Schiffman, Lawrence H. Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls.  Philadelphia:  The Jewish Publication Society, 1994.  ISBN: 0-8276-0530-7.

Schiffman is Professor of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University’s Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies.  He has numerous other honors and publications.  He brings to the study of the Dead Sea Scrolls a knowledge of Jewish history and law that sometimes gets neglected.

Schiffman attempts to sort through some of the polemic and some of the wilder efforts to claim the dead sea scrolls in support of some particular position, theology or pet theory.  In doing so, he provides an excellent introduction to the scrolls overall, their impact on our understanding of the history of Judaism and Christianity, and on the text of the Hebrew scriptures. One might conclude from the title that the work is primarily polemic in nature, but this is definitely not the case.  While there have been many fanciful theories published, and much controversy over the approach to scrolls publication with which an author must deal, Schiffman primarily approaches the documents in a positive way.

Some will be disappointed with his unequivocal rejection of any mention of Christianity or of distinctively Christian ideas in the scrolls.  He discusses a number of proposals for such mentions, but finds them all lacking in evidence, if not contradictory to the evidence.  That the scrolls would have some ideas which would relate to Christianity is not surprising.  Christianity, after all, arose out of Judaism.  What Schiffman does not find is any reference to a unique Christian position. Rather, he finds that where Christianity and the scrolls have common ground, that common ground is of general views in Judaism.  In fact, in a some cases where the view of the Qumran sectarians, the Pharisees and Christians can be known positively, the Christian position is closer to the Pharisaic than to the sectarians.

Schiffman mentions that he has sometimes been accused of an apologetic tendency, and I do detect a little bit of an apologetic tone in this work, particular in the sections on the closed canon and the Biblical text. I believe it is easy to underestimate the impact of the scrolls on the value of the Septuagint and the Samaritan manuscripts in understanding the history of the text.  I also believe that the evidence for a closed canon at Qumran and in first temple Judaism is a little less conclusive than Schiffman suggests.  I would say here though that the arguments presented are cogent and detailed enough for one to evaluate this material on a strictly objective basis.  The apologetic tone is so slight, in fact, that to mention it is to overemphasize it. This book probably reflects the most objective tone of any that I have read which were published for a popular audience.

I recommend this book strongly both for those who are just getting started reading about the scrolls and for those who have read some of the more extreme claims about the scrolls.  It is well documented and engagingly written.