The Dead Sea Scrolls are an endless source of sensationalism. Supermarket tabloids would have us believe that these ancient Jewish texts reveal visitations from outer space, the cure for AIDS and the date the world will end. In a new book somehow inspired by the scrolls, Barbara Thiering of Australia's University of Sydney tells of a Jesus who was crucified but secretly revived at the Dead Sea and who wed a woman bishop at midnight on March 17, A.D. 50.
Amid all the hokum, however, the latest discoveries on actual details in the scrolls are startling enough to generate legitimate headlines. Texts that are only now becoming widely available establish the first connection between the scrolls and Jesus' New Testament words about his role as the Messiah. The debate over all the possible inthed material was mostly thousands of fragments, making reconstruction extremely difficult and interpretations open to dispute. Scholars on the official committee worked on these remaining texts at a painfully slow pace while granting others severely limited access. By the late 1980s, scholarly temperatures reached the boiling point. One recent book claims Roman Catholic priests beholden to the Vatican conspired to cover up the texts lest they shake the doctrinal foundations of the mother church. The true reasons are more mundane: too few scholars monopolizing too much material, team members' personal problems, shortage of money, political and academic intrigue and plain incompetence.
The breakthrough on access occurred in the fall of 1991 when Biblical Archeology Review of Washington capped a lengthy crusade by publishing a bootleg computerized reconstruction of the texts. Specialized research libraries then decided to ignore scholarly protocol and allowed outside experts to examine photos of the unpublished scrolls. Finally the Review published its own photo books.
A co-editor of the photo books is Robert Eisenman, religion chairman of California State University at Long Beach, inveterate foe of the official team and idiosyncratic theorist. Eisenman assumes the Gospels were completed in the 2nd century, although most scholars today date them considerably closer to the time of Jesus. He consequently views the Dead Sea Scrolls as a more authentic account of primitive Christianity than the Gospels.
The leader (perhaps more than one leader) of the Qumran sect was known as the Teacher of Righteousness. Years ago, some scholars theorized that Jesus might have been that teacher, but the idea is seen as untenable, in part because the writings so clearly reflect the Jewish situation in the second century before Christ. Eisenman contends that the later Qumran scrolls were written by a messianic movement that blended into early Christianity. He thinks the teacher was James, the New Testament "brother of Jesus" and martyred leader of the Jerusalem church. James' Qumran faction, says Eisenman, was "aggressive, apocalyptic, nationalist, messianic and violent. Very violent." This wing bitterly opposed the Apostle Paul and his Hellenized movement, which rejected Jewish law and was "otherworldly, cosmopolitan, forgiving."