The Mystery of the Copper Scroll of Qumran
Page 45
4. Joseph A Fitzmyer, Responses to 101 Questions on the Dead Sea Scrolls (New York: Paulist Press, 1992).
5. Alfred Lucas, Ancient Egyptian Materials and Industries (London: Edward Arnold, 1948); George Posener, ‘Sur l’Emploi de l’Encre Rouge dans les Manuscripts Egyptiens’, Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 37 (London: Egypt Exploration Fund, 1951).
6. Yoram Nir-El and Magen Broshi of the Soreq Nuclear Research Centre/Israel Museum, Jerusalem, ‘The Study of Ink Used at Qumran’, The Dead Sea Scrolls Fifty – Years After Their Discovery: Proceedings of the Jerusalem Congress, 20–25 July 1997 (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society in cooperation with The Shrine of the Book, Israel Museum, 2000).
7. D. Barthélemy and J. T. Milik, Discoveries in the Judaean Desert, Vol. I (London: Clarendon Press, 1955).
8. Ibid.
9. Barry Kemp, ‘Amarna’s Textile Industry’, Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, No. 11 (London: Egypt Exploration Society, 1997); Rosalind Hill, Egyptian Textiles (Aylesbury: Shire Egyptology, 1990).
10. Ronny Reich, ‘The Miqwa’ot (Immersion Baths) of Qumran’, The Dead Sea Scrolls – Fifty Years After Their Discovery: Proceedings of the Jerusalem Congress, 20–25 July 1997 (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society in cooperation with The Shrine of the Book, Israel Museum, 2000).
11. N. de. G. Davies, The Rock Tombs of El Amarna – Part II (London: Egypt Exploration Fund, 1905).
12. Sir Ernest Alfred Wallis Budge, The Mummy: A Handbook of Egyptian Funerary Archaeology (London: Constable, 1989).
CHAPTER 18 EGYPT, ISRAEL AND BEYOND – THE OVERLAYING COMMONALITIES
1. Today Egypt is mainly Muslim, with small minorities of most types of Christians – especially Coptic. Israel’s population is 90 per cent Jewish, with Muslim and Christian minorities. The area once occupied by Assyria is now predominantly Muslim, with Christians and a small number of Jews.
2. Sir Ernest Alfred Wallis Budge, Egyptian Religion (Avenel, N.J.: Gramercy Books, 1996).
3. H. Brugsch, Religion und Mythologie, (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, c.1885).
4. Robert Eisenman and Michael Wise, The Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered (New York: Penguin Books, 1993).
5. Theodor H. Gaster, The Dead Sea Scriptures (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1976).
6. Irving M. Zeitlin, Ancient Judaism (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1984).
7. Siegfried Morenz, Egyptian Religion (Ithica, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1994).
8. Budge, Egyptian Religion.
9. Brugsch, Religion und Mythologie.
10. John Romer, Romer’s Egypt, BBC Television Series, 1982. Accompanied by the book, Romer’s Egypt: A New Light on the Civilization of Ancient Egypt (London: Joseph, 1982), also by John Romer.
11. From the Authorized English Bible of the Church of England, 1870.
12. Egyptian hieroglyphs c.1330 BCE. Translated by Professor J.H. Breasted, Ancient Records of Egypt, Vol. II (New York: Russell & Russell, 1906).
13. A. Z. Idelsohn, Jewish Music (New York: Schoken Books, 1929).
14. Ibid.
15. Professor Brooke points out that Psalm 89 is ‘probably even datable to the tenth century B.C.’ George J. Brooke, ‘Exegesis at Qumran – 4QFlorilegium in its Jewish Context’, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, Supplement Series 29 (Sheffield: Dept of Biblical Studies, University of Sheffield 1985).
16. Alfred Sendrey, Music in Ancient Israel (New York: Philosophical Library, 1969).
17. Idelsohn, Jewish Music.
18. Sendrey, Music in Ancient Israel.
19. James A. Sanders, ‘The Psalms Scroll of Qumran Cave 11 (11QPsa)’, Discoveries in the Judaean Desert, Vol. IV (London: Clarendon Press, 1965); James A. Sanders, The Dead Sea Psalms Scroll (Ithica, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1967). Although the Psalm Scroll is incomplete, it contains forty-one psalms of the Biblical canon and eight psalms that are not in the Bible, of which five are known from other Greek and Syriac sources, and three are entirely new. One example of these evocative and beautiful works is the ‘Hymn to the Creator’ (letters in [ ] are reconstructions):
The Lord is great and holy, the Most Holy for generation after generation.
Majesty goes before Him, and after Him abundance of many waters.
Loving-kindness and truth are about His face; truth and judgement and righteousness are the pedestal of His throne. He divides light from obscurity; He establishes the dawn by the knowledge of His heart. When all His angels saw it, they sang, for He showed them that which they had not known. He crowns the mountains with fruit, with good food for all the living.
Blessed be the Master of the earth with His power, who establishes the world by His wisdom.
By His understanding He stretched out the heaven, and brought forth [wind] from His st[ores]. He made [lightenings for the rai]n, and raised mist from the end [of the earth].
See also Geza Vermes, The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English (New York: The Penguin Press, 1997).
20. James B. Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, 2nd ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1955).
21. Morenz, Egyptian Religion.
22. R.N. Whybray, The Succession Narrative: A Study of II Samuel 9–20 and I Kings 1 and 2 (London: SCM Press, 1968).
23. F. Griffith, Stories of the High Priests of Memphis (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1900).
24. Gressmann, Vom Reichen Mann und Armen Lazarus, Abhandlungen der (Kgl.) (Leipzig: Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1918).
25. O. Weinreich, Neue Urkunden zur Sarapis-Religion (Tübingen: University of Tubingen: 1919).
26. H. Puech, Revue de l’Histoire des Religions, 147 (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1955).
27. Siegfried Morenz, Amenemope, Zeitschrift für Agyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde (Leipzig, 1953).
28. R. O. Faulkner, The Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead (London: British Museum Press, 1985).
29. Philippe Derchain, Chronique d’Egypte, 30 (Paris: Le Caire, Imprint de l’Institut français d’archéologie orientale, 1955).
30. Morenz, Egyptian Religion.
31. W. Baumgartner, A. Bertholet (Tübingen: University of Tübingen, 1950).
32. Morenz, Egyptian Religion.
33. S. Herrmann, II Samuel vii; I Kings iii (Leipzig : Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der Universitat Leipzig, 1953–54).
34. P. Humbert, Recherches sur les Sources Egyptiennes de la Litterature Sapientale d’Israel (Neuchâtel: Secretariat de l’Université, 1929).
35. G. Rawlinson, Histories of Herodotus, II (London: J.M. Dent, Ltd., 1858, [1964]). Compare Ecclesiastes 8:15:
to eat, and to drink, and to be merry: for that shall abide with him of his labour the days of his life, which God giveth him under the sun.
Coincidentally many of the wisdom sayings of Solomon in Ecclesiastes are interspersed with the phrase ‘under the sun’ – quite out of context.
Both Isaiah and St Paul (in I Corinthians 15:32) pick up the concept: ‘Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.’ See also Isaiah 22:13.
36. Deuteronomy 4:2 – ‘Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall you diminish ought from it that ye may keep the commandments of the Lord your God which I command you.’ Revelation 22:18–19 – ‘For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, if any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book: and if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things that are written in this book.’
37. Morenz, Egyptian Religion.
38. Miriam Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, Vol. III (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980).
CHAPTER 19 FINAL CLUES FROM THE COPPER SCROLL – ELEPHANTINE ISLAND AND THE FALASHAS OF ETHIOPIA
1. Martin Gilbert, Atlas of Jewish History (London: J.M. Dent Ltd, 1993).
2. Incidenta
lly, Caesarea has slipped to the north of the Taurus mountains, whereas it should be on the coast of Israel between Tel-Aviv and Haifa!
3. John Rogerson, Atlas of the Bible (London: Andromeda Oxford Ltd, 1985).
4. Bezalel Porten, Archives from Elephantine (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968). Porten, at one time Associate Professor of Hebrew and Bible at the University of California, puts forward the suggestion that the ‘Elephantine Colony’ originated from Jewish mercenaries brought in to defend Egypt’s southern borders around 650 BCE. He has to admit, however, that this proposal has many difficulties, as indicated in the text.
5. G. W. Anderson, The History and Religion of Israel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966).
6. Reuven Yaron, Introduction to the Law of the Aramaic Papyri (London: Clarendon Press, 1961).
7. Astarte was originally the Babylonian goddess Anathbethal, who was adopted into the Egyptian pantheon as the daughter of the god Ra around the time of Pharaoh Amenhotep II. She was the protector of horses and chariots and became a particular favourite of Amenhotep III.
8. Yaron, Introduction to the Law of the Aramaic Papyri.
9. T. Eric Peet, Egypt and the Old Testament (Liverpool: The University Press of Liverpool, 1922).
10. A. Vincent, La Religion des Judeo-Arameens d’Elephantine (Paris: P. Geuthner, 1937).
11. A. E. Cowley, Aramaic Papyri of the Fifth Century BC (Oxford: Clarendon, 1923).
12. ‘Elephantine’, Encyclopaedia Judaica (Jerusalem: Keter Publishing House, 1992). See also Peet, Egypt and the Old Testament.
13. Porten, Archives from Elephantine.
14. Ibid. Porten indicates the relative position of the Temple in relation to various adjacent houses. If the Temple was aligned north-west–south-east, the house of Jezaniah ben Uriah and Mibtahiah would be north-west of the Temple, as is indicated in the Aramaic papyri.
15. Michael Chyutin, ‘The New Jerusalem Scroll from Qumran – A Comprehensive Reconstruction’, Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha, Supplement 25 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997).
16. Despite a modern misconception that Jews are prone to exact punitive interest on money owed to them – a misconception perpetuated by Shylock’s antics in The Merchant of Venice – the fallacy of this prejudice was brought home to me when I was in the process of buying a property. The Exchange Contract came back from the vendor’s solicitors with the usual clause on interest payable should I fail to Complete struck out. I asked my solicitors, if the vendor had made a mistake, as the exclusion was clearly to the buyer’s advantage. They came back with the answer that the vendor was an Orthodox Jew and was not allowed to charge interest on outstanding monies. Jewish law, like Islamic law, does not support the charging of interest, although the Old Testament is ambivalent on the subject....
17. Yaron, Introduction to the Law of the Aramaic Papyri.
18. Porten, Archives from Elephantine.
19. Cowley, Aramaic Papyri of the Fifth Century B.C.
20. The quotation is from the New English Bible. The land of Cush commenced at ancient Syene, in the region of Yeb (Elephantine Island), and extended south into Nubia, modern Ethiopia.
21. Porten, Archives from Elephantine.
22. A. Knudtzon, Deir El-Amarna – Tafeln (Leipzig: 1915).
23. E.C. B. Maclaurin, ‘Date of the Foundation of the Jewish Colony at Elephantine’, Journal of Near Eastern Studies, Vol. 27 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968).
24. Amenhotep II’s military successes expanded the Egyptian Empire as never before, penetrating south into the Sudan, further than any previous pharaoh, to beyond the barriers of the Southern Cataracts.
25. The area of Lake Tana has changed little in over 2,000 years and one can visualize the scene that must have confronted the weary travellers from Egypt.
The sound of the Blue Nile Falls, where the waters from Lake Tana pour down, fills the humid air with a deafening roar, like a thousand lions of Judah, and native Amhara tribesman still paddle their flimsy papyrus-reed canoes across the Lake, as they have done for the past millennia.
To the north of the Lake lies the turreted fortress of Castle Gondar, with the immense blue beauty of Lake Tana at its feet. The island would have reminded the refugees of Elephantine, and provided added security from marauders, and a sanctuary – a place where they could carry on their divinely inspired belief in one God and worship him in a cleansed state, washed by the pure, crystal-clear waters of the Lake.
26. Gilbert, Atlas of Jewish History; See also ‘Elephantine’, Encylopaedia Judaica.
27. Christopher Clapham, ‘The Falasha Fallacy’, The Times Literary Supplement, 10 September 1993.
28. North American Conference on Ethiopian Jewry, 1996.
29. Graham Hancock, The Sign and the Seal (London: Mandarin, 1993).
30. David Kessler, The Falashas – A Short History of the Ethiopian Jews (London: Frank Cass, 1996).
31. Lionel Bender, The Non-semitic Languages of Ethiopia (African Studies Center, Michigan State University, 1976).
32. Wolf Leslau, Falasha Anthology (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1951).
33. Shoshana Ben-Dor, The Religious Background of Beta Israel: Saga of Aliyah (Jerusalem, 1993).
34. Roland de Vaux, Archaeology and the Dead Sea Scrolls (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959).
35. Joyce Tyldesley, Nefertiti – Egypt’s Sun Queen (London: Viking, 1998).
36. de Vaux, Archaeology and the Dead Sea Scrolls.
37. Yemenite Jews on the other side of the Red Sea did celebrate Purim and Chanukah. The Falashas also did not appear to celebrate the Festival of Succot (Tabernacles).
38. This is a somewhat weak excuse, as modern techniques make it relatively simple to detect whether blood carries the HIV virus, and all blood destined for use in transfusions is routinely screened for HIV and other contaminants anyway.
39. Steve Jones, In the Blood – God, Genes and Destiny (London: HarperCollins, 1996).
40. Georges-Pierre Seurat was a nineteeth century (1859–1891) French artist who developed a style by using a series of dots to create the impression of an image in his painting, which became known as ‘pointillism’.
41. Kathleen M. Kenyon (revised by P. R. S. Moorey), The Bible and Recent Archaeology (London: British Museum Publications, 1987).
42. Thomas L. Thompson, The Bible in History: How Writers Create a Past (London: Jonathan Cape, 1999).
43. N. de. G. Davies, The Rock Tombs of El Amarna – Part V (London: The Egypt Exploration Fund, 1908).
CHAPTER 20 ACADEMIC AND SCHOLARLY REACTION
1. John J. Collins, Scrolls Scholarship as Intellectual History, The Dead Sea Scrolls at Fifty, Society of Biblical Literature, Qumran Section Meetings, Scholars Press, 1999.
2. Lawrence H. Schiffman and Marlene Schiffman, ‘And it Shall Come to Pass in the End of Days: An Agenda for the Future’, The Dead Sea Scrolls at Fifty – Society of Biblical Literature, Qumran Section Meetings, Scholars Press, 1999.
3. Judah K. Lefkovits, The Copper Scroll 3Q15: A Reevaluation – A New Reading, Translation, and Commentary (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1999).
4. Email correspondence between Professor Harold Ellens and the author, Autumn 2002.
5. Eduard Meyer, Aegyptische Chronologie, Abhandlungen der Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (Leipzig: Heinrichs, 1904).
6. Examples of the sun disc symbol appearing in Israel include: the Bible Lands Museum, Jerusalem, a small bone plaque carved with the figure of a Philistine being led captive by two Hebrews who have a sun disc emblem above their heads, found at Megiddo, dated to c.1200 BCE; portrait of King Jehu, of the Northern Kingdom of Israel (842-814 BCE), with a sun disc shown over his head, on the black obelisk of Shalmanseser III, where he is seen rendering gifts to the Assyrian king (Ninian Smart, Atlas of the World’s Religions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999)); inscriptions on jar handles, from places such as Hebron, Tel-Lachish and Beth Shemesh, from the period o
f King Hezekiah (c.720 BCE), a reforming King who threw out pagan imagery and re-established pure monotheism, showing the sun disc (representing the Aten) accompanied by a beetle (representing transformation Kheperu, which I have earlier suggested might be the origin of the word Hebrew) both Egyptian symbols, and sometimes the words ‘belonging to the King’ inscribed in ancient Hebrew. The earliest manifestation of the sun disc occurs in the reign of Tutmoses IV. The shift in power from the priests of Amun at Karnak, to the solar priests, centred at Heliopolis, seems to have accelerated under this pharaoh’s rule, less than forty years before the arrival of Pharaoh Akhenaten and fully fledged monotheism. Examples of this move towards the Aten can be seen in an ivory wrist-ornament, found at Amarna, showing Tutmoses IV with the solar disc positioned directly over his head, and a large scarab, or beetle form amulet, of the same pharaoh, inscribed with words alluding to foreigners who were ‘subjects of the rule of Aten forever’. The latter piece is now in the British Museum - see Nicholas Reeves, Akhenaten (London: Thames & Hudson, 2001). The use of scarab beetle imagery, indicating the creation of life with the daily emergence of the sun, was, of course, not confimed to the Amarna period , but its use was in keeping with the idea of the Aten renewing life each day and was definitely in vogue at that time, especially on jar sealings. In fact the rise in the influence of the Aten can be seen in the issuing of a large scarab shortly before Akhenaten’s reign, referring to Aten as ‘the God who makes pharaoh mighty in battle’ (Cyril Aldred, Akhenaten King of Egypt (London: Thames & Hudson, 1996)). Extensive studies of the many references to sun imagery in the Old Testament and Dead Sea Scrolls have been undertaken by people like J. Morgenstern (Fire upon the Altar, Quadrangle Books, 1963); M. Smith (Helios in Palestine, Eretz Israel 16, 1982); H. P. Stähli (Solare Elemente im Jahweglauben des Alten Testaments, Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 66, Freiburg University, 1985); M.S. Smith (The Near Eastern Background of Solar Language for Yahweh, Journal of Biblical Literature 109, 1990); and more recently by J. Glen Taylor (Yahweh and the Sun, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, Supplement Series 111, (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993)). Glen Taylor, of the University of Toronto, Canada, points out that sun, horse, and chariot imagery, evident in Israelite history, is unlikely to have derived from Assyrian motifs as archaeological examples are dated to earlier periods than those of Assyrian influence - such as the three tier cult stand found at Taanach in Israel, dated to the tenth century BCE. Interestingly the central part of this artifact, usually occupied by the deity in this type of statuary, is deliberately left empty, indicating the idea of an invisible God (T. Mettinger, The Veto on Images and the Aniconic God in Ancient Israel, in H. Biezas, ed., Religious Symbols and Their Functions, Almqvist & Wiksell, 1979).