Who Wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls?. Norman Boone's Golb
the years, I was greatly aided in my research on the scrolls and other historical topics by two fellowships granted me by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and by additional research aid from the Lucius Littauer Foundation, the American Philosophical Society, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. My heartfelt thanks also go to the administration of the University of Chicago for granting me an extended research leave during the 1992-93 academic year, which enabled me to bring the manuscript of this work to completion without the interference of other academic responsibilities. Part of my research on the Qumran texts was carried out at Cambridge University, where over many years I have benefited from the collegial hospitality made possible by a life membership in Clare Hall granted to me by its Fellows and President.
I owe a debt of gratitude as well to Mark Chimsky, formerly editor-in-chief of Collier Books and my editor at Macmillan, for his goodwill, unceasing encouragement, and most perceptive advice regarding the style and flow of the following chapters. His assistant, Rob Henderson, was of aid in countless ways during all stages of preparation of the manuscript. I am also grateful to my editor at Scribner, William Goldstein, for his important help in the final stages of the book’s preparation.
Yet it would be absurd to think that I could have written this book without constant return to Israel for both shorter and longer periods of study. The many friends and colleagues there who have encouraged my investigations include, first and foremost, Yehoshua Blau, Israel Eph’al, Moshe Gil, Joel Kraemer, and Ya’acov Shavit, as well as the late Menahem Banitt, Michael Klein, and Shelomo Morag. I particularly wish to salute my fellow members of the Society for Judaeo-Arabic Studies—themselves for the most part living and working in Israel—whose incisive scholarship and collegial goodwill continue to be a source of pride and sustenance of spirit.
Intended both as a treatment of the scrolls in their relation to Jewish history and as a chronicle of the rise and fall of a notable idea of modern scholarship, this work differs from studies in literature, languages, and other disciplines in an important respect. While also involving the investigation of texts and sources, the immediate challenge of historical study is not only to decipher, translate, and interpret pertinent records but, beyond this, to construct the narrative necessarily lying behind the words of the texts. The words are not, of course, the history itself, but rather provide the means to write it. Yet once this is accomplished, a fundamental contrary element is brought into play, particularly as one proceeds further and further back through the centuries and discovers the increasing sparseness of historical testimony. Whatever historical witnesses we possess for these older periods, they remain islands in a sea of muteness. Compared to what we might have known had the records of the human past not mostly perished, we can learn little from ten existing documents of one vanished king, from fifty of another, or yet a thousand of another. We do not, in effect, possess the wholeness of history, but only some of its pages—and a historian faces his severest challenges when he attempts to grasp the silences that lie between them. For this goal, philology and analysis of texts are only preliminary tools aiding another process. This consists not in whimsy or fantasy, nor in the imagination of the painter or poet, but rather in the synthesis of new ideas regarding the historical unknown, made from separately experienced elements: the faculty, that is, by which we attempt to reconstruct what is absent. Except for those narrow historical works that only recite the barest known facts, there are none that do not require this mental synthesis—and no process is more difficult for the historian to master or use judiciously. Aware that this book will inevitably contain shortcomings, I take comfort in Master Tarphon’s observation two millennia ago that “It is not your duty to complete the work, but neither are you at liberty to desist from it.”
Chicago
Spring 1994
PREFATORY NOTE TO THE TOUCHSTONE EDITION
Since publication of the hardcover edition of this book in 1995, many readers in America and abroad have written to express their fascination with the ongoing scholarly conflict over the meaning of the scrolls. International interest has been signaled as well by the book’s recent and impending publication in several languages on three continents. These indications notwithstanding, the question of accessibility of the work to wider groups of readers—particularly students and others concerned with the history of ideas, academic sophistry, and the nascence and promulgation of religious beliefs—has been a matter of serious concern to me since its publication. Thus it was with pleased relief that I learned of the interest of Touchstone in publishing a paperback edition of the work. Except for several minor corrections of wording, the original chapters remain intact in this edition. To bring matters up to date, however, an Afterword has been appended to the volume, in the hope that its contents will be all the more revelatory of the current struggle now being played out. It is a pleasure to thank my wise and discerning editor at Touchstone, Penny Kaganoff, and her devoted assistant, Diana Newman, as well as all others at the press who have been involved in the project, for their valuable help in bringing the present edition before the public. I can do no more than hope that the effort expended will contribute, in whatever additional measure, to the current debate on the scrolls and on the scholarship so far consecrated to their elucidation.
Chicago
Spring 1996
PREFATORY NOTE TO THE 2012 E-BOOK EDITION
This edition largely follows the wording of the 1996 Touchstone USA edition. A number of references to recent works have been inserted at relevant points in the text.
In face of the Qumranological establishment’s traditional dogmatism, Dead Sea Scroll studies continue to evolve. There is growing recognition that a proper understanding of the Scrolls and their relationship to ancient history and thought is tied to the issues first fully discussed in the first edition of this book.
In addition, readers are presented with a wide range of basic ethical issues emerging from the claims and events described in the book. Many of those claims and events point to a basic fact: advances in scholarship in this field have been hindered by efforts to discourage free and open debate.
The controversy surrounding those efforts is in fact an essential backdrop to the debate over the origin of the Scrolls. It is hoped that the new availability of Who Wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls? will enhance public awareness of the central issues involved and the challenges facing researchers who study these ancient Jewish texts.
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