Name-dropping:
Dead Sea Scrolls (pronunciation: obvious) (found beginning in 1947).
Ancient scrolls containing most of the Hebrew Bible, a treasure map, and some excellent recipes for plum wine.

Essenes (pronunciation: EH-seens):
A religious community of Jews living around the time of Jesus who probably penned a majority of the scrolls.

When to Drop Your Knowledge:
When you’re discussing Ulysses (see p. 164), for starters, since the scrolls contain even less punctuation than Ulysses’ final chapter. But your knowledge of the Dead Sea Scrolls should also sufficiently impress armchair scholars of religious history.

The Basics
Often referred to as the greatest manuscript discovery of modern times (although we’re still waiting for a bunch of Salinger novels to show up when the guy finally dies), the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered along the northwest shore of the Dead Sea in 11 separate caves. (If you’re driving from Jerusalem, head east until you get to Jericho and then hang a left.) Dating from sometime between the third century BCE and first century CE, the “scrolls” consist of 850 documents (not all of which were recovered in scroll form) written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek.

Oddly enough, the scrolls weren’t discovered by hardworking archaeologists but by a shepherd. In 1947, a boy named Muhammad edh-Dhib threw a stone into a cave in hopes of chasing out a goat he thought might have ambled into it. The stone shattered pottery, and when Muhammad entered the cave to investigate, he found the first scrolls. By 1956, all the extant scrolls had been recovered.

Most scholars believe the scrolls were written by a Jewish group known as the Essenes, who were driven out of Jerusalem because their apocalyptic worldview clashed with that of the Jewish leadership. The Essenes believed in a sort of Star Wars world: There was good, and there was evil, and there was not a lot of gray. The good (the “children of light”) would soon conquer the evil (the “children of darkness.” George Lucas came up with better names, at least). The group who wrote the scrolls seems to have been fixated on a messiah fi gure possibly living among them who’s constantly referred to as the “Teacher of Righteousness.”

Because the scrolls were written right around the time of Jesus, they have importance to scholars of both Christianity and Judaism. Jewish scholars have used them to learn more about the emergence of Rabbinic Judaism in the last centuries BCE, while Christian scholars have learned more about the apocalyptic religious movements in and around Palestine during Jesus’ life. If nothing else, the scrolls reveal the diversity within Judaism at the time they were written, and help us to understand the Judaic world in the years before the destruction of the second Temple by the Romans in 70 CE.

Alas, Poor Shapira
In 1883, an antiquities dealer in Jerusalem named M. W. Shapira decided to sell an ancient manuscript of the Book of Deuteronomy that he believed to be extremely valuable. But when he sent the manuscript to biblical scholars, they all agreed it was a forgery. Humiliated, Shapira committed suicide in 1884. The following year, the manuscript sold at auction (for much less than Shapira hoped to get for it), and promptly disappeared. But comparisons of the Dead Sea Scrolls to descriptions in stories of Shapira’s manuscript have led scholars to believe that Shapira’s Deuteronomy was quite probably authentic—and thus worth untold millions. Which just goes to show you: Never, ever kill yourself.

THE SCROLL YOU WISHED YOU FOUND
Our personal favorite scroll is the so-called Copper Scroll, which is actually written on copper and contains a veritable treasure map of secret tombs containing silver, gold, and spices. Um, Goonies 2, anyone? We’re picturing an aging Corey Feldman teaming with, say, Dakota Fanning, to seek out gold in them thar Holy Hills.

Conversation Starters
◆ Initially, many of the Dead Sea Scrolls didn’t look like scrolls, but like a jigsaw puzzle. Scholars pieced together over 100,000 fragments of papyrus—a particularly impressive accomplishment when considering that most of the pieces were missing.

◆ Among the texts in the scrolls are some Thanksgiving psalms, a couple rocking hymns, and a divinely dictated battle plan. They also contain psalms attributed to King David and a host of sacred writings not found in the Hebrew Bible.

◆ Other than paragraph indentations the scrolls have no punctuation absolutely none which as you can imagine makes for difficult reading