New proposals about the Copper Scroll

THAT DARNED TREASURE AGAIN: The Mysterious Copper Scroll and the End of Days. One stood among the Dead Sea Scrolls: made of metal, and seemingly never meant to be read. Who made it, when and why, and how was Bar-Kokhba involved? Shimon Gibson presents a new theory (Ruth Schuster).

"The Copper Scroll has always been an enigma, already from when it was first discovered and published. None of the explanations that have been proposed until now have been especially convincing," commented ancient Judaism expert Yonatan Adler of Ariel University. "Enigmatic finds of this kind absolutely invite thinking outside of the box, and I congratulate Prof. Gibson for his intriguing hypothesis. Even if we still lack a 'smoking gun,' novel and well-argued hypotheses of this kind are what move the inquiry forward."

Agreed. Gibson has valid criticisms of the current most popular understanding of the Copper Scroll, that it listes the Temple treasures:

He also points out that if it was a list of Temple valuables removed and secreted by Jews ahead of a howling Roman advance, surely they would have taken the menorah too; yet we see the Romans took that. "Some of the looted funds were even used to help build the landmark Colosseum in that same city which is admired by tourists to this very day," Gibson adds.

True. But there's no guarantee that all of the treasure would have been successfully smuggled out of Jerusalem and into hiding. The menorah would have been more difficult than most of the treasures to move quietly.

Gibson's hypothesis that the treasures are actually contributions to the Bar Kokhba revolt is interesting, but the amounts seem too large to me. Likewise with Joan Taylor's proposal that they are a list of post-Temple Temple tithes from the Bar Kokhba era. Even if we go with Lefkovits'z karsh (rather than talent) intepretation of the amount listings, which we may or may not do.

But I haven't seen either article. If I saw the full arguments I might change my mind.

For a BAR article by Taylor on the subject, see here. If she is proposing there that the CS treasure includes some Temple paraphrenalia and later tithes, which the summary seems to indicate, that makes more sense to me.

For many other PaleoJudaica posts on the Copper Scroll, start here and follow the links.

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