THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS SIR,—In commenting on my article on
the Dead Sea Scrolls in your issue of May 18, Mr. Hugh Montefiore speaks of 'its strange inaccuracies and misleading statements,' and hopes that I will conform in future to the 'canons of sound learning and good judge- ment.' Mr. Montefiore himself seems to have read rather inattentively both my article and Millar Burrows's book.
I. He says that I 'castigate the "incom petence" of the Jordan Department of Anti- quities and, by inference, its Director; a peculiar charge to make in view of the testi- mony of those who have actually worked under Mr. Lankester Harding.' The group of 'scrolls in question were brought, as I specifi- cally state, not to the Department of Anti- , quities of Jordan—Jordan did not exist at that time—but to the Palestine Archieological Museum, with whom Mr. Harding had nothing to do. It is Mr. Harding himself who has said that the assistant librarian here, to whom the scrolls were shown, 'had no competence to give a judgement on antiquities of any kind.'
2. The note which asserts that the English translation of The Dead Sea Scrolls of the Hebrew University was published in England by the Cotswold Press—which Mr. Montefiore says is not correct—was added without my knowledge by the editors of Encounter. My own copy came from Israel.
3. 'He alleges that Burrows affirmed that it is quite out of the question for either John the Baptist or Jesus to have been a member of the Essene community. . . • It is unfortu- nate that Burrows should be so misrepre- sented.' If Mr. Montefiore will look on page 329 of the Millar Burrows booki he will find the following statement: 'Not only John the Baptist but even' Jesus Himself has sometimes been thought to be an Essene. This is quite out of the question, as all competent historians now recognise.'
4. Mr. Montefiore points out that in my quotation from the letter to The Times signed by Pere de Vaux and his colleagues, the word 'messianic' should be 'Essenic.' This is Mr. Montefiore's sole point. I do not know how this slip occurred. I regret it, but I do not understand what 'axe' Mr. Montefiore imagines it would help me, as he says, `to grind.' In this form the passage does not make sense.
.5. 'It is certainly out of the question that Jesus was ever an Essene, as all competent historians since Lightfoot have agreed.' 1 do not know what Mr. Montefiore—or Mr. Burrows either—means by 'competent his- torians.' We know so little about Jesus' life
that there is no way of treating Him historically at all. There are no standard biographies of Jesus. There have been scholars of undoubted 'competence'—like the late Benjamin Smith —who doubted his very existence. The theory that He may have been an Essene or manipu- lated by the Essenes has been current since the eighteenth century. If Mr. Montefiore will con- sult Albert Schweitzer's book, The Quest of the Historical Jesus, he will find an account of the writers who have been interested in this idea : Bahrdt, Venturini, Gfreirer, Ghillany, R6g1a and Nahor. It has never been particu- larly popular. It has always been resisted by the churchmen for reasons similar to those which make them resist the derivation of the literature of Christianity from the literature of the Dead Sea Sect. Professor A. Dupont- Sommer, in the January-February issue of the French review Evidences, has given a brief summary of the theory that Jesus was an Essene, in the course of which he says that this theory 'appeared to the Christian apolo- gists like an instrument of war, like a diabolical argument calculated to sap the originality and the transcendency of the Christian Revelation.'—Yours faithfully, Wellfleet, Mass. EDMUND WILSON
[Mr. Montefiore writes : `Mr. Wilson's first point is entirely justified, and I apologise for my error in confusing the late Palestinian Department of Antiquities, with its Jordanian successor over which Mr. Harding presides. I was inexcusably misled by Mr. Wilson's slight- ing references to the "British Harding" in an earlier publication.
'His second point needs no comment. As for his citation from Dr. Burrows's book, Mr. Wilson quotes a passage out of its context, as he did in connection with Mr. Allegro's letter to The Times (about which I note he makes no mention in his letter). Dr. Burrows writes : "With regard to all this, it must be said that, if John the Baptist had ever been an Essene, he must'have withdrawn from the sect and entered upon an independent prophetic ministry. This is not impossible but the connection is not so close as to make it very probable. . . . Not only John the Baptist but even Jesus Himself has sometimes been thought to be an Essene. This is quite out of the question, as all com- petent historians now recognise." (Italics mine, page 329.) Burrows is speaking not of John but of Jesus. On the fourth point, it certainly seems to me to "make sense" to deny that Jesus "fitted into a well-defined messianic pattern." My point was that this is not what Pere de Vaux wrote; he was concerned to deny his direct connection with Essenes.
'Mr. Wilson's last point is the most im- portant. He is, of course, entitled to his own opinions about "competent historians." Corn- petence in a subject, however, is normally the judgement of those who have expert know- ledge in that field. Mr. Wilson cites a list of names of eighteenth-century and nineteenth- century writers who are not generally regarded as authoritative by representative scholars of any creed today. The question whether Jesus was an Essene is best decided not by a list of such names but by an examination of argu- ments, and I know of no one who is prepared to take the Gospel evidence seriously Who has ever been able to answer Bishop Light- foot's devastating demolition of that hypo- thesis. Mr. Wilson seems to blur the question by saying that there are no standard bio- graphies of Jesus. The fact that no proper biography can be reconstructed from the Gospels does not mean that nothing is known of His life—and sufficient is -known to- prove that He could not have been an Essene.'— Ed itor, Spectator.]
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