MEDIEVAL DEAD SEA SCROLLS? I think not.

Casting doubt upon the Dead Sea Scrolls (Kansas City Star)

Appearance of Western letters and numbers raises eyebrows

By NEIL ALTMAN and DAVID CROWDER

Special to The Star

�If it is true that these scrolls display writing techniques that are from a later period, then they become historically interesting.�
Erik Heen of the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Philadelphia

For many years Notre Dame professor James C. VanderKam has studied photos of the Dead Sea Scrolls. But he was startled recently when he noticed what appeared to be the Arabic numerals �3� and �2� written between lines and in the margins of the documents supposedly written more than 2,000 years ago.

�When could that have been put on there?� the veteran scholar wondered after seeing what looked like an upside-down number �3� in the margin of the Great Isaiah Scroll, one of many scrolls considered to be the greatest archaeological discovery of the 20th century.

Here's what puzzled this scrolls scholar: Ancient Hebrew, the language used by scribes copying the scrolls, did not have the symbols �3� or �2.�

In fact, according to scholars who have studied the development of writing, the numbers written in these styles and shapes did not begin to show up in Western civilization until around A.D. 1200, long after the scrolls were believed to have been written.

�It creates suspicion when you see Western letters and numbers on manuscripts attributed to a Jewish sect that existed before the birth of Christ,� said Peter Pick, former dean of arts and sciences at California's Columbia Pacific University, after looking at a number �3� and letter �x� that can be seen close together between two lines of the Great Isaiah Scroll.

What other scholars now wonder is whether these numbers would cast new doubts on the scrolls' age, the identity of their authors and, more important, their legitimacy.

[...]

Milton Fisher, professor emeritus of Old Testament and former president of the Philadelphia Theological Seminary, was among the first scholars to study the Great Isaiah Scroll when it was first published in 1950.

When asked to examine a photograph of the Isaiah Scroll with what appears to be a Western number, Fisher said, �It certainly looks like a �3x' to me.�

This particular �3x� is found between two lines of a passage that is translated, �And now I will tell you what I will do with my vineyard �� (In Hebrew and English Bibles, this line is found in the Old Testament, Isaiah 5:5.)

On the scroll, the �3x� is found immediately below the Hebrew word for �I,� referring to God.

The translated passage from the Isaiah Scroll is similar to a parable told by Jesus in the New Testament books of Matthew, Mark and Luke: When the owner sends his only son to collect the fruits of the vineyard from the tenants, the parable goes, they kill him.

Pick and others said they suspect the �3x� may be a symbol from medieval times (fifth to 15th centuries) for the Christian trinity � God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit � and marks a Christian interpretation of the Old Testament passage.

[...]

I have the Trever photographic edition of the Isaiah Scroll in front of me as I write this. The alleged "2" appears on p. 13, fifth line from the bottom in the word "I will (not) ask" ()$)L) from 7:12. What the article doesn't say, rather misleadingly I think, is that the "2" is actually part of the last letter, the tip of the lamed. This letter was made with a loop at the top (compare the other lameds in the same line, to the right). It looks to me as though the loop, combined with the natural bumpiness of the leather, has been distorted by the pixelation of the photograph to make the ghost numeral 2. There's no way someone would have written a numeral actually inside the letter - it would be writing in ink on ink. If you look at the word LM(LH ("above" � "heaven" in RSV v. 11) to the right, you can almost see another "2" there in the second lamed, but it's more clearly just part of the loop. In sum, the "2" is clearly an optical illusion.

As for the supposed "3x,' which you can find on p. 11, between lines 17-18, under the word "I" ()NY) of Isa 5:5, all I can say is that this is a particularly grubby section of the scroll and there are a great many meaningless dirt marks, probably further distorted by the pixelation. If you look hard enough at these you can start to see all sorts of interesting things. For example, between lines 18 and 19 I can see what looks like the arabic numeral "31" just above the end of the word "from raining" (MHM+YR - ""that they rain" in RSV), and I can see what looks like the letter "J" in our alphabet one more line down, over the word "planting" (NT() in v. 7. I'm sure more staring would produce more such results, but none of them are real.

I can't comment on the supposed Chinese letters, because I don't know Chinese, or the supposed Western alphabet letters in other scrolls, because the article doesn't give enough information to locate them. But I will say I'm skeptical. There are numerous converging lines of evidence that place the origin of the Dead Sea Scrolls around the turn of the era, and if this is the best evidence that Altman and Crowder (who have been at this for years) can put forth to challenge that conclusion, I'd say it's pretty secure.

Also, I hope very much that Erik Heen was misquoted or quoted out of context in the header above. But just to clarify, here's a news flash: these scrolls are already historically interesting.

(Free, but rather intrusive, registration is required to view the article.)

UPDATE: More here (important).

UPDATE (24 April, 2005): As I had guessed, Erik Heen was also misrepresented in this article.