I was amused to learn that the San Diego Natural History Museum's media campaign for its Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit appears to be encountering a rather skeptical reception, particularly with the usual anti-American commentators living abroad. Today I read the following on the British View from 80 blog...
In the USA, a country half-choked by its own religiosity, a Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit has been doing the rounds (currently at the San Diego Natural History Museum) oddly promoting an old and largely discredited theory about the origin of the scrolls and their authors. This theory for a long time was the "official" version and those who did not agree had great trouble accessing the scrolls material for research, thereby allowing the clique which did have access to call all the shots. Happily, after the release of photographs of the scrolls by a third party, this scholarly monopoly, which should never have existed in the first place, was broken. Archaeologists returned to the site at Qumran near which the scrolls were found and failed to find any trace of the proto-monastic community which had been claimed as the origin point of the scrolls. Meanwhile the provenance of the documents themselves was being independently questioned on textual and paleographic grounds. Far from being produced by a monastic sect in a desert "monastery" they are more likely to have been produced in Jerusalem and later hidden in the desert on the eve of war with the Romans. But is this new and compelling evidence mentioned in the current exhibit? No, the same old fairy story is still going the rounds...
The article continues:
Charles Gadda, writing in NowPublic, began to investigate and found behind the exhibit in San Diego there is a web of Christian fundamentalist "universities" and "scholars". The quotation marks are necessary for, as you read the piece, you will learn many of the participants in this story claim qualifications for which there is little evidence and which were often awarded by universities that they or their colleagues founded in the first place. (To say diploma mill might be going too far, but not very.) Gadda has taken the time and considerable effort to dig away at the connections between these Christian fundamentalist "bible scholars" and the far from accurate presentation of the scrolls and their story that is going on right now in San Diego. He tells how celebrities, including Steven Spielberg, have contributed considerable sums of money to fund the exhibit and its associated "scholars", most likely unaware that they were aiding in the dissemination of pseudo-archaeology and an unjustified and partisan interpretation of the evidence both textual and archaeological. Bush's administration has famously not been kind to science and any findings that don't fit a particular (often fundamentalist Christian) world view, but Gadda by his excellent work shows that good old private enterprise is more than capable of the same kind of deceit. Gadda is to be commended for his excellent work in demonstrating the lengths to which people and organizations can go to protect cherished beliefs in the face of conflicting evidence.
The article contains numerous additional links that would have required a laborious effort to reproduce; see the View from 80 blog for the complete text.
Posted by: Joanne on Monday, August 20, 2007 - 07:34 AM
