UNRAVELING THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS

Don't get it twisted.

There are 100,000 fragments (many as small as your fingernail), so few are complete. It took them fifty years to reassemble and publish (and that did not come without pressure on the scholars assigned the pieces) so conspiracy theories abound. Unwrap it all and you come up with 236 scrolls of the Bible (every Old Testament book except Esther) and 565 other scrolls, all scattered among eleven caves. The scribes lived in a community near the Dead Sea, and in all likelihood were killed or captured and the community burned when the Roman army was on its way to Masada about AD 70.

As far as archaeology can tell us, they were a group of Zadokite priests. Back up and get the backstory. Rome occupied Palestine and sat an Edomite usurper on the throne (Herod). The office of high priest passed from the hands of the levitical priesthood and into the hands of the highest bidder via Roman authority (falling now to families like Caiphas, it became totally corrupt). Ezekiel describes a class of priest that will minister in the Millennial Temple. They won't serve the house or the people. They get to stand directly before the Lord because they "kept my charge" and "went not astray" (Ezek 44:15; 48:11). Watchman Nee has a great sermon on being a son of Zadok.

Since the High priesthood was sold and the true priests locked out, they set up camps, at least one of them at Qumran, where they could carry on the process of preserving the scripture, calling out a remnant of men to separate themselves and be holy, and ready themselves for when the Messiah would overthrow Rome, and the temple would again be theirs to administrate. So among the types of writings at Qumran (besides OT books) are scrolls that describe the code they will live by, the apocalyptic end of the age, and commentaries that try to recognize how the words of the Bible might be coming to pass in their contemporary events. They were waiting because they believed they were the ones.

Fast forward to 2007. The display at Union Station was disappointing. Exhibits at the Nelson are more extensive. Put all the display scrolls end to end and maybe it's eight feet worth (hardly impressive). Many were facsimiles and only a half dozen or so the real thing (and they seemed so incredibly small—must have had young kids doing the copying).

So why the buzz? Well, as far as the Bible is concerned, if you have read any modern translations of the Old Testament lately you know that it's not just a translation of the Hebrew Bible any more. In fact, in many instances they forgo the Hebrew entirely for a combination of LXX (that's the Greek translation of the OT called the Septuagint), the Targums (an ancient Aramaic translation of the same), and the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Now that's amazing me, because you know what I discovered in the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit? A text in transition. Get this. There are several copies of Joshua, but one of them was surely an apprentice's practice scroll. The lettering is inconsistent. The same word is spelled different ways (including the hero's name!), and the sequence of some events is different from the Masoretic (standard, received-as-authoritative) Hebrew text. In another scroll it says David wrote 4,050 psalms, "composed through prophecy," and contains some apocryphal ones (psalms not preserved in the Hebrew Bible).

What do we have here? A scripture in flux. You would have to liken the 200 years from 130 BC to AD 70 to the time from 1380-1580 in England. You could read the Bible in several versions (Geneva, Bishop's, Matthew's, Tyndale) and the English text was in a state of flux until a standard text was translated and accepted by the priesthood of believers.

Let me open a window on that last word. Watch a football game. In the NFL they allow a coach to challenge a call and subject it to instant replay (excuse me, "Referee Replay Review"). So the play happens. Referees on the field make a call. But you know what? It happened in the heat of the moment. Maybe it was not quite correct. So the referee goes to a camera where he can watch multiple views from different angles and then hands down the definitive call.

Now look. Why would you take readings from texts that were obviously in such a state of flux, and use them to overthrow the certain and sure Masoretic Hebrew text? Remember? After the temple was finally and fully destroyed, the Jews recognized that they needed to sit down with all their stuff, get it in a bag, determine which texts they knew were inspired, put the rest on the shelf, and then devise a scribal system (Masoretic) that would lock every letter in place for all time. Yeah, that text. You know, the one that came down to us after the play was reviewed.

Why in the world would you prefer flawed scrolls just because they are old? But every modern translation does it. Yada, yada.

And oh, by the way, there should be academic buzz about Qumran in NT circles as well, even though there are no NT texts there. Why? Because it proves how wrong N.T. Wright is (and E.P. Sanders and James D.G. Dunn, et al). They are all proponents of the "New Perspectives on Paul" (NPP). The new perspective is that second temple (first-century) Palestinian Judaism really believed in salvation by grace after all(!) You had to keep the law in order to stay saved, not get saved.

But Qumran proves they got it twisted. Our reading of Paul was right and Wright is NT wrong, because those Jews were just as legalistic as Martin Luther thought they were. Paul was talking about justification by faith. Righteousness is imputed for salvation. Baptism is not the "badge of being in the community," making you saved.

Don't get it twisted.

The Beatles and the Jesus Tomb

John, Paul, George and Richard. Four common names. Find them in a mausoleum in Liverpool and you might think nothing of it. But what if you found the names, John, Paul, George, and RINGO? Now you'd think that the Beatles really did die on the Sgt. Pepper album, and maybe you had discovered their secret resting place.

I like Simcha. I have seen a few episodes of his "Naked Archaeologist" show on the History Channel. But definitely his latest docu-drama for the Discovery Channel is the slickest (thanks to the backing of the producer who made The Terminator, Rambo, Aliens, and more recently Titanic).[1]

BTW, did you see the guy with Simcha on the Ted Koppel critique broadcast after the documentary? He is a University of North Carolina professor, featured often in Simcha's docu-drama, named James Tabor. Guess what he wrote in a book that was published just last year? Oh, come on, guess. Nope, it's a lot crazier than that.

Less than a year ago James Tabor was saying that the father of Jesus was Pantera (a Roman soldier), and Jesus was buried in Galilee (not Talpiot). Slop. Sloppy slop, even if you are a professor. What would make you change your mind like that in less than a year, especially when you have your own book out there, the fruit of "30 years of research"? Can anyone say m-o-n-e-y?

· The tomb was uncovered in 1980.

· Nothing remarkable was seen by the professionals (archaeologists) in the names Jesus son of Joseph, Judah son of Jesus, Yose, Maria, Mariamenou/Mara, and Matia being together in one cemetery. Maybe this is because they have found at least six bone boxes scattered around Israel with the name Jesus scribbled on them.[2] The first one came "out of the cave" in the 1940s and caused people to go ape back then, too.

· Joseph was the second most popular name in first century Palestine (after Simon/Simeon), over 8% of the boys born being named that. They were named Judah over 6% of the time, and Jesus 3.4%. More than one in five baby girls were named Mary (Top two names for 2005? Jacob and Emily. Really. http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/babynames/ ).

· The same claims (about this being Jesus' family tomb) were made on Easter Sunday TEN YEARS AGO (1996 "to be precise," as the English would say) by British journalist Joan Bakewell in a documentary. That claim was then published in the National Enquirer, the Star magazine, etc. (Yes, this is the same Joan Bakewell that read on the BBC a gay erotic poem about a Roman centurion lusting after Jesus. Slop.)

Why hasn't there been more media hype from mainstream outlets and more pent-up demand that the tomb be reopened, the bones rediscovered, and everything re-examined? Because the major media already know what I just told you. They understand the way the game is being laid out by Simcha and James Cameron.

· There may have been as many as 35 people buried over the generations in the ten ossuaries in this one family tomb.

· The six people named could have belonged to as many as four separate generations. This fact and the prominence of the family (commoners could not afford rock-hewn tombs, but were instead interred in trench graves) would account for the decorative carved symbol above the cave. It was not a "pilgrimage site" for early Christians (they were all being hunted-down in the generation after Jesus—remember what pre-converted Saul was doing?). It was simply a mausoleum in a cemetery.

· Jesus' followers never called him "son of Joseph."

· If he did have a son named Judah by Mary Magdalene (1) the Romans and Jews would have hunted him down in the ensuing persecutions after Jesus' death (and the tomb would never be so clearly marked as it is on the outside as his burial place), and (2) the Gnostics would surely have mentioned this fact in their writings (after all, they were the alleged keepers of the real "secret code," for which you needed a real, secret decoder ring and a secret handshake).

· Call Michael Jackson, because here's the Thriller. This could not have been the burial place of Jesus Christ. How do we know? Because the stones tell us so. There are about 1000 ossuraries extant. Study the 200 or so that have inscriptions. What you find is that if someone is local to the area (say a Jerusalemite buried in their hometown) then it will say something like "Jesus son of Joseph." But if the person was not born in the city in which he is buried then it says "Jesus of Nazareth" or "Jesus of Nazareth son of Joseph." So the bone box in question actually proves it entombed one of the 20 or so Jesuses (Jesusii?) who had Joseph fathers, that lived in Jerusalem at the time (see note 2 below, which is from an archaeological journal, not a religious magazine).

While the James ossuary (bone box) had a fairly close (though not identical) match in the patina to the other nine found in the tomb, we did not get to see how any of the others of the nine matched up to each other.

The tenth bone box was not the "James son of Joseph" one (Oded Golan got it from Silwan, much closer to the temple mount, and it had dirt in it from that location). The actual tenth box was so plain vanilla that it was simply placed out in the courtyard of the Rockefeller Museum for storage, with the hundreds of others that were unremarkable. (I think somebody now uses it as a planter.)

MARIAMNE/RINGO
To Simcha Jacobovici, "Mariamne" is the Ringo he's been looking for.

Sorry, Simcharlie. Close, but no Bingo.

First, Mary Magdalene is always called "Maria" in the Greek New Testament (and indeed in all 1st century Christian works), never Mariamne.

Second, Mariamne is not even found as a name until Hippolytus uses it in the early 3rd century in his Refutatio (refutation) of Naassene heresy, and even there it is no clear reference to Mary Magdalene (as a matter of fact, it is not clear at all, because it appears as a variant reading in some manuscripts only as a deformation of the name "Mariamme"). It refers to a Mary who had contact with James, that is all.

Watch how Simcha has to over-reach (dramatizations and all). One scholar, Francois Bovon, read in a 14th century Greek copy of a 4th century book called The Acts of Philip (which they then go on to say comes from a 2nd century tradition—you can see how the game works by how they lay out the board) about Mariamne. Now, in Gnostic writings like this any "Mary" is often a composite of three women from the actual historical gospels: Jesus' mother Mary, Mary of Bethany (Martha's sister, sitting in the dust at her rabbi's feet) and Mary Magdalene. Gnostic Mary.

But I have read the Acts of Philip. And in this writing "Mariamne" is associated with Martha and clearly identified as Philip's sister (and, she does not stay in Jerusalem at all, but acts as a missionary to foreign countries—and no mention of a son named Judah). Historically, Philip and Mary Magdalene were from different towns, so it is NOT Mary Magdalene who is being called "Mariamne" in the Acts of Philip. Bovon is simply wrong. Or "unsupported" as the genteel scholars say when talking to one another. (Always check your scholars before you buy-into them. Stop the slop.)

But let's look at the facts of the case (bone case, if you will). It says "Mariamenou," in the Greek genitive case, meaning "of Mary" or "belonging to Mary." It is then followed by a slash and the word "Mara." Simcha says this is related to the word "master." But I knew I was writing this blog, and all my reader are sophisticated, cultivated, educated people. So I couldn't be no lazy blog-writer; I would have to do my homework. So I did an etymological investigation, and do you know what I discovered? Mara is the diminutive form (short for) Martha. "Mary's / Martha." That's what it says. Don't get it twisted.

For Simcha, finding "Master Mariamne" was the master stroke, the "aha moment" that convinced him this was the family tomb of Jesus and his son Judah by Mary Magdalene. A better alternative to this slop? What Have They Done with Jesus: Beyond Strange Theories and Bad History, by Ben Witherington III (Zondervan, 2006).

CONCLUSION. So what do we have here? Four Aramaic, one Hebrew, and one Greek name. Why? Because it is an ancient tomb that housed up to three dozen people from as many as four generations. Don't smash them all together and announce that the Beatles have reunited.

Is this "The Lost Tomb of Jesus"? No, this is the tomb of a "lost Jesus," lost in antiquity until discovered in 1980. It is the tomb of the week. John, Paul, Martin and Wally. Maybe "Martin" is "George Martin, producer of all their records. And perhaps Wally was the long lost son that we didn't know Paul ever had. Honey, get my videocam! "I am the Walrus. Koo-ko-ka-choo."

Footnotes
1. Now, I do have to admit that for as slick as it is, Simcha is also sloppy. He says, "Everybody knows there are two Marys in Jesus' life: his mother and Mary Magdalene." No, there are several: a) His mother b) Magdalene c) Mary of Bethany, Martha's sis d) Mary of James and Joses e) Mary of Cleopas. (Did I say it was sloppy? Maybe it is just slop. Sensational slop.)
2. There were probably at least 20 people named Jesus (and hence could have been 20 family tombs) in and around Jerusalem who had both, Joseph for a father and James as a brother, at the same time that Jesus Christ lived, “Burial Box of James the Brother of Jesus,” Biblical Archaeology Review 28:6 (Nov/Dec 2002): 33.

Postmodern Monday

It's just another manic Monday (oh-woe)
I wish it was Sunday (oh-woe)
'Cause that's my Funday (oh-woe)
My "I don't have to run day" (oh)
It's just another manic Monday

—The Bangles

Available on the compilation CD,"Sedated in the 80s" Vol. 6. No, really. Okay, since you don't believe me, look it up.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000063T43/ultimate80ssongs
And while you're at it, don't miss Sigue Sigue Sputnik's cover of "Love Missile F1-11", Sinead O'Conner (bald before Britney), and "Pictures of Matchstick Men" by Camper Van Beethoven from the same CD.
(Kids . . . I just don't understand their music today. BTW, I decided my "PoMo update” music is "Da Da Da" by TriO.)

Leonard Sweet uses the compass as a metaphor for the Bible.

WHAT'S YOUR COMPASS FOR?
· Revelation—God manifesting himself
· Inspiration—That manifestation comes to you in words
· Direction—The Spirit giving you guidance about where to go
· Instruction—The scripture giving you wisdom on how to go

Prov 6:23 For the commandment is a lamp; and the law is light; and reproofs of instruction are the way of life:

You can have a map, but there is a trap to a map. A map is a trap if you don't know which way to turn it. So again, we are back to needing a compass.

Ps 119:105 Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.

How'd you miss that, all these years? And yet, when it comes to understanding and interpreting and applying God's word to your life, many of us do not have a clue as to how to read the compass! Can I explain why people get so many interpretations out of just one passage? It has to do with

HOW PEOPLE LOOK AT THE WORD
1. The covenant model (reductionist)
A lot of reformed churches look at it like this. They limit the Bible to a covenant of works and a covenant of grace. (I readily admit I am oversimplifying, but we have to start somewhere if we are going to get anywhere.) The Bible talks about five covenants, but they see it in two, even though those two don't match the old covenant or the new testament exactly (I'm not saying it makes sense, I'm just saying this is how some people look at it to get the interpretation they do).

2. The quid pro quo model (superstitious)
The so-called "word of faith" movement and the charismatic crowd read the Bible this way. So then the Bible becomes a slot machine. If you put in a little money and pull the lever, then God is obligated to bless you with what you ask, for economic prosperity. So Leonard Sweet says that the cross is no longer our symbol, but the ladder is, because we are using the word of God to get up the social and economic and prosperity ladder.

3. The isolationist model (existentialist)
I don't have time to go to church on Sunday. I don't have time for this whole community concept. There is no way I am giving myself to God in ministry. Me and my God is just about us, so the Bible is only about me. My relationship with God is just a personal thing, and I'm not interested in invading anybody else's space with it or invalidating their presuppositions with it.

4. The historical-critical model (suspicious)
This is the most popular in scholarly and academic circles[1]. Postmoderns will point out that this viewpoint came out of the Enlightenment. Baruch Spinoza wanted religion out of European politics. So he said, Let's take the Bible—which supposedly is supporting the divine right of all these despotic kings nobody likes—and let's subject it to independent verification. We won't accept it just because it says it. We are not going to look at it supernaturally, but scientifically[2]. We may be thousands of years after the original events, but unless we can find it in archaeology ourselves, we doubt it. The resurrection is not scientific, so we reject it. Creation is not credible so we trash it. We are going to approach the Bible skeptical, and even hostile to what it says.

Can I go ahead and give you the right way to look at it?

2 Tim 2:15 Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.

5. The dispensational model

The Dispensational Idea is that God is dealing differently with people in different periods of time. All the Bible is for us, but it's not all written to us. Duh! That's why you don't have to do that legalistic thing, and that Hebrew-Israelite thing, and that Sabbath-keeping thing. How God deals with us now has to be distinguished from how God deals with people in the seven dispensations. Okay, watch.

SEVEN DISPENSATIONS
1. God deals with Adam and Eve in innocence, Gen 1-3
2. God deals with them after the fall in conscience, Gen 4-7
3. God deals with nations after the flood in human government, Gen 8-11
4. God deals with Abraham's descendants as a chosen family according to promise, Gen 12-Exod 19
5. God deals with Moses' people as a chosen nation according to law, Exod 20-Matt 26
6. God deals with the church as a chosen people according to grace, Matt 27-Rev 3
7. God deals with the world during a Millennium according to the kingdom, Rev 20

WARNING: Rules in one dispensation may not apply in a later dispensation, and some things said in a later dispensation cannot be applied to an earlier time. Dispensationalism takes a very bad rap in contemporary academe. Yet Tom Wright (as much as he hates dispensationalism) nearly almost gets to this in his "multilayered view," his model of the Bible as a five-act play[3].

Throughout the Bible God is all about his mission, but each time he is doing it a different way, because in each dispensation there is a failure. Adam and Eve fall and get kicked-out of the garden. Their descendants fail and the world gets destroyed by a flood. When people fail after the flood, God chooses Abraham. Abe's descendants leave the Promised Land, get stuck in Egypt, and God has to bring them back as a nation. That nation fails (watch this) under priests in the book of Judges, under kings in Kings and Chronicles, and under prophets in the prophetic books. They get exiled and God starts another new thing with the church. But since the church has also failed(!), we get removed in a rapture, and Jesus is going to come back again to set up the kingdom on his own.

So whatever is going on in history, God is at work dispensationally, because dispensations simply mean that God has a destiny that is designed for everybody.

Have to catch an early train, got to be to work by nine
And if I had an air-o-plane, I still couldn't make it on time
'Cause it takes me so long just to figure out what I'm gonna wear
Blame it on the train but the boss is already there.

It's just another manic Monday (oh-woe)
I wish it was Sunday (oh-woe)
'Cause that's my Funday (oh-woe)
My I don't have to runday (oh)
It's just another manic Monday.

Tools for Your Toolbox
What the Bible Is All About by Henrietta C. Mears, Gospel Light
Strong's Concordance (or Young's or Cruden's) by James Strong, Hendrickson (or AMG or Nelson or Zondervan) Publishers
The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge by R.A. Torrey, Hendrickson


1. For those who read footnotes, another point needs to be made here. It looks like I am implying that everyone who uses the historical-critical model critiques the Bible according to their humanistic and rationalistic standards to "independently verify" or validate its claims. In point of fact, many Evangelicals modify this to the "grammatical-historical" method to give the impression they are not sitting as critics on an inerrantly inspired Bible.
2. N.T. Wright, an Evangelical scholar who regularly interacts with liberal theology and postmodern philosophers, has modified this into a "critical-realist" approach, see The New Testament and the People of God, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992, pp. 32-66,61-67,467,470.
3. Wright, N.(icholas) T.(homas), The Last Word. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2005, 121ff. We could also refer to this model in chapter five of the massive tome above, but this volume is more "accessible," as they say. Too bad Robbie Bell has mis-read Wright into implying that we must constantly be "re-interpreting" the Bible now that we are in Act Five. Listen to Wright: "Whether or not one adopts this particular scheme of interpretation, it is vital that we understand scripture, and our relation to it, in terms of some kind of overarching narrative which makes sense of the texts" (p.122). Doesn't he sound like a dispensationalist there?