But in recent years, Dr. Orit Shamir of the Israel Antiquitied Authority and Naama Sukenik (a relative of Eliezer Sukenik, who identified the scrolls ) of Bar-Ilan University have shone their scholarly spotlight on the crumbling cloth.

Dr. Orit Shamir of the Israel Antiquities Authority with some of the cloths found with the Dead Sea Scrolls that have now been analyzed. Photo by: Olivier Fitoussi

Shamir, conservator of organic materials in the Antiquities Authority, is in charge of a small, crowded, humidity-controlled storeroom in Jerusalem’s Har Hotzvim industrial zone, filled with organic materials discovered in various digs.

“I always say that I did my doctorate on rags,” Shamir says, laughing. She studied weaving for two years, even weaving fabric on a model of a Second Temple period wooden loom that she built herself.

Among the finds in the storeroom are a number of boxes containing small, torn pieces of cream-colored linen from Qumran.

Shamir and Sukenik found that these fabrics are different from any others found in excavations from the same period. Both Jews and Romans wore mainly woolen garments Shamir says, and so wool is the fabric mainly found at archaeological sites. Most of the clothing also featured a dark red pattern described both in Talmudic and non-Jewish sources.

But pieces of cloth from Qumran are completely different. They are all made of linen rather than wool and are devoid of decoration. They were also bleached, apparently by soaking them in bicarbonate of soda produced from plants, which Shamir says was both costly and labor-intensive.

Shamir says that linen, which was more expensive than wool, was worn as a manifestation of religious observance. According to Shamir, both Romans and Jews wore white “to stand out and convey modesty.”

The researchers believe that after the fabrics were too tattered for further use as clothing, they were used to wrap the scrolls.

The fact that the inhabitants of Qumran wore white dovetails perfectly with a description by the ancient historian Josephus that acolytes of the Essene sect wore white. He mentions elsewhere that these garments were linen.

The conclusions support the view of one scholarly camp that believes that the Dead Sea Scrolls were written by the Essenes, who concealed them at the site. But another camp, considered more radical, believes they were written in Jerusalem by the Sadducees, a religious faction that eventually died out.

Shamir and Sukenik are in no hurry to tie their research to either school of thought, but it is hard to ignore the fact that it supports the theory that community of anchorites lived at Qumran and wrapped their sacred scrolls in the remnants of their garments, hiding them in the caves for generations.

Shamir points out the great similarity between the archaeological finds at the site and descriptions of the sect. Qumran is also unusual in that no evidence of weaving, traditional women’s work, was found there, which Shamir says also supports that a sect in which no women were present lived at Qumran.

Four pieces of fabric stand out among the hundreds in the study. They bore a single blue thread, woven in a square. Shamir, like the late scholar of the Judean Desert and Masada, Yigael Yadin, believes this fabric was not in secondary use, but was made to wrap and protect the scrolls, and the single blue thread was made to represent the Temple.

Photo by Werner Braun

Roland de Vaux, one of the original excavators of Khirbet Qumran near the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea, believed the Dead Sea Scrolls found in the Qumran caves had been written, collected and ultimately hidden away by the Essenes, a Jewish sectarian group that may have established the small, secluded settlement of Qumran in the late second century B.C.E.

While some scholars have since argued that there is, in fact, no connection between the site of Qumran and the scrolls, scroll scholar Sidnie White Crawford writes in “A View from the Caves” that evidence from the Qumran caves proves that de Vaux was right after all.

According to Sidnie White Crawford, the Qumran caves where the scrolls were found can be divided into two groups. The caves closest to the site were chiseled out by hand from the soft, marl sandstone upon which Khirbet Qumran was built. These caves, which were closer to the site and better ventilated, served as residences for Qumran’s inhabitants. The residential Qumran caves (with the exception of Cave 4—see below) contained only a smattering of scrolls kept for private study and personal devotion.

Beyond the immediate sandstone terrace, however, is another set of Qumran caves. These natural caves, which penetrate the imposing and darkened limestone cliffs above Qumran, were used to hide many of the longer and more complete Dead Sea Scrolls, including the War Scroll and the Temple Scroll. The presence of these scrolls, which often reflect a sectarian Jewish worldview, indicates the scrolls were hidden by the local Qumran community, not by desperate Temple priests fleeing the Roman destruction of Jerusalem.

Cave 4, a residential cave in the marl terrace, however, was found littered with thousands of jumbled scroll fragments representing more than 500 separate documents written across a span of nearly three centuries. According to Sidnie White Crawford, almost every composition found in the other ten caves, including the caves in the limestone cliffs, is also found in Cave 4. The lack of any discernable order among the texts suggests they were all hurriedly placed in the cave at the same time, possibly in an effort to hide them from the Roman legion that was advancing on Qumran in 68 C.E.

In addition, Sidnie White Crawford found evidence that the same pottery jars in which the scrolls were stored are also found in fragments all over the site of Qumran. This evidence indicates that those who placed the scrolls in the caves and those who lived at Khirbet Qumran were one and the same.

La Bibliothèque de Qumrân, 2

TORAH — Exode — Lévitique — Nombres

Édition et traduction des manuscrits Hébreux araméens et Grecs sous la direction de K. Berthelot et Th. Legrand

Collection « La Bibliothèque de Qumrân » N° 2

Édition du Cerf, Paris

ISBN : 978-2-204-08773-5 – SODIS : 8284192 – EAN : 9782204087735

68,00 €

464 pages

Composée de neuf volumes, la « Bibliothèque de Qumrân » a l’ambition d’offrir à tous un accès à des textes difficiles surgis d’un lointain passé et qui jettent une lumière renouvelée sur les racines de la culture occidentale. Avec cette publication, on disposera de la totalité des quelque neuf cents manuscrits exhumés de onze grottes environnant le site de Qumrân. Les divers écrits sont classés thématiquement, en suivant l’ordre des livres de la Bible hébraïque.

Ce volume est le deuxième de la série. Il présente les textes liés aux livres dé l’Exode, du Lévitique et des Nombres.

Collaborations : Stéphanie Anthonioz – Katell Berthelot – Jean-Claude Dubs – David Hamidović – Michaël Langlois – Thierry Legrand – Paul Mpungu Muzinga – André Paul – Kévin Trehuedic

Ever since early 1947, when three Ta’amireh Beduin discovered large clay jars containing ancient scrolls in a cave close to the ruins of an abandoned settlement at Khirbet Qumran, the 150-year-old field of scientific biblical research sought to re-examine all the accumulated knowledge in light of these new findings. In 1952, Beduin discovered another cave with a number of additional texts, and in 1956 they found cave 11.

Israel was fortunate to purchase some of the scrolls and bring them to Jerusalem through the efforts of Prof. Eliezer Sukenik of the Hebrew University and his son, Yigael Yadin. For the past 60 years these 2,000-year-old scrolls have been studied by scholars, and have proven to be a historical, philological and religious treasure.

They were catalogued and photographed, and became a valuable guide for the study of Jewish Second Temple times – an original witness of the past.

The release in 1991 of the complete set of photographs of all scrolls ended the fight for access.

Their successful restoration put an end to undue expectations; today we know much more about the sect that lived and prayed at Qumran and called itself “Yahad” (together, a commune).

This intense study of the Dead Sea Scrolls embraced all previously known Jewish writings of the Second Temple period – a huge apocryphal and pseudoepigraphical library, the authors of testaments, sacred legends, apocalypses, psalms, ethics, wisdom literature and historical studies. The Book of Maccabees, works by Josephus, Philo Alexandroni, Plini the Elder and other ancient writers were enriched by the Qumran findings.

The research involved the rabbinic literature, Mishna, Midrashim, Talmud, the Jewish medieval apocalypses and mystical writings, as well as the early Christian sources and Christian apocrypha.

TODAY we know that Qumran settlers were members of the Essene movement, as described by Josephus, Philo Alexandroni and Pliny the Elder and proposed independently by Prof. Eliezer Sukenik in 1948; it was worked out in detail by Andre Dupont-Sommer in 1951 and later by many other scholars. Today, however, we understand that while the Qumran group lived according to the Essene principles, administered a rigorous entrance test for admission, shared one purse and imposed communal ownership, enforced restrictions on marriage, divorce and celibacy and insisted on the rules of cleanliness, it was a separate body, established by their leader, Zadok.

This ‘Teacher of Righteouness’ was a priest who no longer adhered to the rules of the Second Temple and together with a group of pupils had fled from Jerusalem to Damascus before settling at Qumran. The sect’s choice of sacred literature, their special reverence for Ezekiel and Daniel, the Book of Enoch, Jubilees, and the Sectarian Torah indicate that they had their own specific liturgy and ideology.

Ben Zion Wacholder, Professor of Talmud and Rabbinics at HUC-JIR, and Prof. Shemaryahu Talmon of Hebrew University located the roots of the Qumran community in the anti-priestly circles of the Second Temple – a split which followed the Maccabean uprising.

According to them Zadok, the Teacher of Righteousness (once the pupil of Antigonus of Soho) found, or wrote by himself, the Sectarian Torah, instituted his own calendar and planned to establish his own Temple.

The sect believed in predestination, and perceived evil as an autonomous reality antecedent to humanity’s ability to choose, equating it with purity which had to be preserved at any cost.

The sect cherished Enoch 1 (the Ethiopian version) – a collection of five independent books: the Book of the Watchers, the Astronomical Book, the Dream Visions, the Epistle of Enoch, the Similitudes of Enoch.

Prof. Gabriele Boccaccini in her study “Beyond the Essene Hypothesis” divides post-Maccabean Judaism into three trends: the Samaritanism, Zadokite Judaism and Enochic Judaism.

Zadokite Judaism developed into Sadduceeism and Pharisaism, which in turn led to the development of rabbinic Judaism, while Enochic Judaism developed into Essenism and Qumran Judaism.

It was out of Essenism that some scholars trace the development of Christianity. Enochic Judaism favored Ezekiel, Daniel, the Books of Enoch, Jubilees, the Sectarian Torah, the Testament of 12 Patriarchs, and the Aramaic Testament of Levi.

In his The Dawn of Qumran, the Sectarian Torah and the Teacher of the Righteousness, Ben Zion Wacholder disputes and supplements the original findings published by Yigal Yadin in The Temple Scroll.

Accordimg to Wacholder, this scroll (which he named “The Qumranic Torah,”) was the sect’s constitution.

A study of its content, form and purpose shows a similarity to the legal sections of the Five Books of Moses. The “Qumranic Torah,” the Book of Jubilees and the Damascus Document were the sect’s ideological foundation. Wacholder traces the development of the Qumranic community and finds numerous references to its existence in the Talmud and other Jewish sources.

Gabrielle Boccaccini and Giovanni Ibba in their study: “Enoch and the Mosaic Torah” sum up the findings of over 80 scholars from all over the world who gathered at the Fourth Enoch Seminar at Camadoli, Italia in 2007. According to these scholars, the prophetically inspired Enochic Judaism challenged the more rational priestly Zadokite movement and found at Qumran an oasis of peace, as opposed to the pressures of Roman-occupied Jerusalem. The “Teacher of Righteousness” and his group of select individuals (each had to undergo a three-year probation) lived like the early Christians in their own closed community and shared messianic dreams and hopes in an attempt to bring a better world nearer by their own strict behavior.

According to Wacholder, the ideas of the Qumran sect, which originated in pre-Maccabean times, survived the destruction of the Second Temple by at least a millennium, and served as the basis of the faith of Anan, the father of the Karaite movement. There can be little doubt that Josephus oversimplified the Second Temple religious movements by dividing them into three main ideological groups of Pharisees, Sadduccees and Essenes. The real world was much more complicated.

(© Sebastian Scheiner / AP) A staff member from the Israel Antiquities Authority points at a fragment of the Dead Sea Scrolls in a laboratory in Jerusalem on Tuesday.

JERUSALEM — Israel’s Antiquities Authority and Google announced Tuesday that they are joining forces to bring the Dead Sea Scrolls online, allowing both scholars and the general public widespread access to the ancient manuscripts for the first time.

The project will grant free, global access to the 2,000-year-old text — considered one of the greatest archaeological finds of the last century — by uploading high-resolution images that are exact copies of the originals. The first photographs are slated to be online within months.

The scrolls will be available in their original languages, Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek, and at first an English translation. Eventually other translations will be added, and Google’s translation feature may also be incorporated. They will also be searchable.

Antiquities official Pnina Shor said the project will ensure the original 30,000 fragments that make up the scrolls are preserved while broadening access. The scrolls, which includes parts of the Hebrew Bible and treatises on communal living and apocalyptic war, have shed important light on Judaism and the origins of Christianity.

“Anyone in his office or on his couch will be able to click and see any scroll fragment or manuscript that they would like,” she said.

Experts have long complained that only a small number of scholars were allowed access to the scrolls at any given time, which were found in caves near the Dead Sea in the late 1940s.

The delicate scrolls are kept in dark, temperature-controlled rooms at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, where only four trained workers are permitted to handle the parchment and papyrus documents. Exposure to light risks damaging the scrolls.

Shor said scholars must coordinate viewing the scrolls with the authority, which receives about one request a month. Most are given access, but because no more than two people are allowed into the viewing room at once, scheduling conflicts arise.

Researchers are given three hours with only the limited section they have requested to view.

For the last 18 years, segments of the scrolls have been displayed in museums around the world, each time undergoing painstaking efforts to move them from each location. Shor said a typical 3-month exhibit in the U.S. draws more than 250,000 people.

Yossi Matias, an official from Google-Israel, said the project was part of a greater attempt to “break down barriers” and encourage the “dissemination and preservation of global heritage and culture.”

Matias said Google has worked with European universities and Iraq’s national museum to bring other texts and artifacts online, but the nature of the scrolls makes them more appealing to a greater public.

(© Tara Todras-whitehill / AP) Il rotolo di Isaia - Israel Museum di Gerusalemme

Gerusalemme, 19 ott. (Ap) – I Rotoli del Mar Morto, manoscritti risalenti al primo secolo e ritrovati nel 1940 nella località cisgiordana di Qumran, potrebbero finire on-line grazie ad una partnership fra Google e le autorità archeologiche israeliane.

Il progetto permetterà di accedere al testo – considerato una delle più importanti scoperte archeologiche del secolo scorso – grazie a delle immagini ad alta risoluzione: le prime scansioni dovrebbero essere messe on-line entro pochi mesi.

Inoltre, verrà approntata anche una trascrizione dei manoscritti nel testo originale e in traduzione: gli esperti si sono lamentati delle difficoltà di accedere ai Rotoli, che contengono parti della Bibbia ebraica e si ritiene appartenessero ad una comunità essena, una setta religiosa ebraica contemporanea al primo cristianesimo.

Sections of the Dead Sea Scrolls on display at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem in 2008. Baz Ratner, Reuters.

The recent decoding of a cryptic cup, the excavation of ancient tunnels in Jerusalem, and other archaeological detective work may help solve one of the great biblical mysteries: Who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls?

The new clues hint that the scrolls, which include some of the oldest known biblical documents, may have been the textual treasures of several groups, hidden away during wartime — and may even be “the great treasure from the Jerusalem Temple,” which held the Ark of the Covenant, according to the Bible.

The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered more than 60 years ago in seaside caves near an ancient settlement called Qumran. The conventional wisdom is that a breakaway Jewish sect called the Essenes — thought to have occupied Qumran during the first centuries B.C. and A.D. — wrote all the parchment and papyrus scrolls.

But new research suggests many of the Dead Sea Scrolls originated elsewhere and were written by multiple Jewish groups, some fleeing the circa-A.D. 70 Roman siege that destroyed the legendary Temple in Jerusalem.

“Jews wrote the Scrolls, but it may not have been just one specific group. It could have been groups of different Jews,” said Robert Cargill, an archaeologist who appears in the documentary Writing the Dead Sea Scrolls, which aired Tuesday at 9 p.m. ET/PT on the National Geographic Channel. (The National Geographic Channel is part-owned by the National Geographic Society, which owns National Geographic News.)

The new view is by no means the consensus, however, among Dead Sea Scrolls scholars.

“I have a feeling it’s going to be very disputed,” said Lawrence Schiffman, a professor of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University (NYU).The new view is by no means the consensus, however, among Dead Sea Scrolls scholars.

Dead Sea Scrolls Written by Ritual Bathers?

In 1953, a French archaeologist and Catholic priest named Roland de Vaux led an international team to study the mostly Hebrew scrolls, which a Bedouin shepherd had discovered in 1947.

De Vaux concluded that the scrolls’ authors had lived in Qumran, because the 11 scroll caves are close to the site.

Ancient Jewish historians had noted the presence of Essenes in the Dead Sea region, and de Vaux argued Qumran was one of their communities after his team uncovered numerous remains of pools that he believed to be Jewish ritual baths.

His theory appeared to be supported by the Dead Sea Scrolls themselves, some of which contained guidelines for communal living that matched ancient descriptions of Essene customs.

“The scrolls describe communal dining and ritual bathing instructions consistent with Qumran’s archaeology,” explained Cargill, of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

Dead Sea Scrolls: “Great Treasure From the Temple”?

Recent findings by Yuval Peleg, an archaeologist who has excavated Qumran for 16 years, are challenging long-held notions of who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Artifacts discovered by Peleg’s team during their excavations suggest Qumran once served as an ancient pottery factory. The supposed baths may have actually been pools to capture and separate clay.

And on Jerusalem’s Mount Zion, archaeologists recently discovered and deciphered a two-thousand-year-old cup with the phrase “Lord, I have returned” inscribed on its sides in a cryptic code similar to one used in some of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

To some experts, the code suggests that religious leaders from Jerusalem authored at least some of the scrolls.

“Priests may have used cryptic texts to encode certain texts from nonpriestly readers,” Cargill told National Geographic News.

According to an emerging theory, the Essenes may have actually been Jerusalem Temple priests who went into self-imposed exile in the second century B.C., after kings unlawfully assumed the role of high priest.

This group of rebel priests may have escaped to Qumran to worship God in their own way. While there, they may have written some of the texts that would come to be known as the Dead Sea Scrolls.

The Essenes may not have abandoned all of their old ways at Qumran, however, and writing in code may have been one of the practices they preserved.

It’s possible too that some of the scrolls weren’t written at Qumran but were instead spirited away from the Temple for safekeeping, Cargill said.

“I think it dramatically changes our understanding of the Dead Sea Scrolls if we see them as documents produced by priests,” he says in the new documentary.

“Gone is the Ark of the Covenant. We’re never going to find Noah’s Ark, the Holy Grail. These things, we’re never going to see,” he added. “But we just may very well have documents from the Temple in Jerusalem. It would be the great treasure from the Jerusalem Temple.”

(Also see “King Herod’s Tomb Unearthed Near Jerusalem, Expert Says.”)

Dead Sea Scrolls From Far and Wide?

Many modern archaeologists such as Cargill believe the Essenes authored some, but not all, of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Recent archeological evidence suggests disparate Jewish groups may have passed by Qumran around A.D. 70, during the Roman siege of Jerusalem, which destroyed the Temple and much of the rest of the city.

A team led by Israeli archaeologist Ronnie Reich recently discovered ancient sewers beneath Jerusalem. In those sewers they found artifacts—including pottery and coins—that they dated to the time of the siege. (Related: “Underground Tunnels Found in Israel Used In Ancient Jewish Revolt.“)

The finds suggest that the sewers may have been used as escape routes by Jews, some of whom may have been smuggling out cherished religious scrolls, according to Writing the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Importantly, the sewers lead to the Valley of Kidron. From there it’s only a short distance to the Dead Sea—and Qumran.

The jars in which the scrolls were found may provide additional evidence that the Dead Sea Scrolls are a collection of disparate sects’ texts.

Jan Gunneweg of Hebrew University in Jerusalem performed chemical analysis on vessel fragments from the Qumran-area caves.

“We take a piece of ceramic, we grind it, we send it to a nuclear reactor, where it’s bombarded with neutrons, then we can measure the chemical fingerprint of the clay of which the pottery was made,” Gunneweg says in the documentary.

“Since there is no clay on Earth with the exact chemical composition—it is like DNA—you can point to a specific area and say this pottery was made here, that pottery was made over here.”

Gunneweg’s conclusion: Only half of the pottery that held the Dead Sea Scrolls is local to Qumran.

Scroll Theory “Rejected by Everyone”

Not everyone agrees with the idea that Dead Sea Scrolls may hail from beyond Qumran.

“I don’t buy it,” said NYU’s Schiffman, who added that the idea of the scrolls being written by multiple Jewish groups from Jerusalem has been around since the 1950s.

“The Jerusalem theory has been rejected by virtually everyone in the field,” he said.

“The notion that someone brought a bunch of scrolls together from some other location and deposited them in a cave is very, very unlikely,” Schiffman added.

“The reason is that most of the [the scrolls] fit a coherent theme and hang together.

“If the scrolls were brought from some other place, presumably by some other groups of Jews, you would expect to find items that fit the ideologies of groups that are in disagreement with [the Essenes]. And it’s not there,” said Schiffman, who dismisses interpretations that link some Dead Sea Scroll writings to groups such as the Zealots.

UCLA’s Cargill agrees with Schiffman that the Dead Sea Scrolls show “a tremendous amount of congruence of ideology, messianic expectation, interpretation of scripture, [Jewish law] interpretation, and calendrical dates.

“At the same time,” Cargill said, “it is difficult to explain some of the ideological diversity present within some of the scrolls if one argues that all of the scrolls were composed by a single sectarian group at Qumran.”

Caves Were for Temporary Scroll Storage?

If Cargill and others are correct, it would mean that what modern scholars call the Dead Sea Scrolls are not wholly the work of isolated scribes.

Instead they may be the unrecovered treasures of terrified Jews who did not—or could not—return to reclaim what they entrusted to the desert for safekeeping.

“Whoever wrote them, the scrolls were considered scripture by their owners, and much care was taken to ensure their survival,” Cargill said.

“Essenes or not, the Dead Sea Scrolls give us a rare glimpse into the vast diversity of Judaism—or Judaisms—in the first century.”

Da quando sono stati trovati nelle 11 grotte di Qumran, mezzo secolo fa, i Rotoli del Mar Morto hanno riempito i dipartimenti di archeologia di punti interrogativi. In quale Paese del mondo sono stati scritti? E dove sono state lavorate le pergamene? A questa seconda domanda è riuscito a rispondere uno studio italiano dei Laboratori Nazionali del Sud (LNS) di Catania dell’Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN). Con un acceleratore di particelle. La pergamena di pelle di cammello di cui sono fatti 900 documenti sarebbe stata prodotta proprio nel luogo in cui sono stati trovati, vicino alle rovine dell’antico insediamento di Khirbet Qumran, sulla riva nord-occidentale del Mar Morto.

“I residui di bromo che abbiamo trovato nei campioni analizzati – spiega il fisico che ha condotto la ricerca, Giuseppe Pappalardo – sono compatibili con la composizione delle acque di quella zona, che contengono una quantità di bromo tre volte superiore a quella di qualunque altro mare. Si tratta di uno studio ancora in fase preliminare, ma ci sono buone probabilità che l’origine sia quella”. La datazione si aggira fra il 200 a.C. e il 60-70 d.C., ma non è detto che i testi siano stati scritti nello stesso luogo in cui sono stati creati. L’analisi degli inchiostri verrà fatta dallo stesso team che ha condotto lo studio, ed è quindi probabile che i ricercatori italiani riescano, tra qualche anno, a svelare tutti i misteri che girano intorno a questo rompicapo dell’archeologia.

Il team è riuscito nella scoperta grazie all’uso incrociato di un nuovo sistema di analisi, chiamato XPIXE e brevettato proprio dai LNS dell’INFN, e dell’acceleratore di particelle in funzione negli stessi laboratori. I documenti analizzati rappresentano, tra l’altro, i testi biblici più antichi mai conosciuti, ma ad essere stata studiata è stata solo una parte di tutta la documentazione, il Rotolo del Tempio, che non fa parte della narrazione biblica ma descrive la costruzione e la vita di un luogo sacro,spiegando come trasmettere la legge al popolo.

La ricerca dei fisici dell’INFN si è svolta in collaborazione con i ricercatori del BAM-CNR (Bundesanstalt fiir Materialforschung) di Berlino: “La dottoressa Ira Rabin del BAM – spiega Pappalardo – ci ha contattato perché sapeva che eravamo gli unici ad avere tutta la strumentazione necessaria. Un’apparecchiatura portatile ci ha permesso di fare lo screening dei campioni, analizzando tutti i loro elementi chimici, quelli pesanti e quelli leggeri. Abbiamo analizzato i frammenti dei Rotoli del Tempio perché sapevamo che gli esami sarebbero stati più facili, erano campioni più puliti”.

La ricerca è stata realizzata su sette piccoli campioni di dimensione media (circa un centimetro quadrato) e i reperti provenivano dal Shrine of the Book of the Israel Museum e dalla collezione Ronald Reed della John Rylands University Library. Gli strumenti del laboratorio LANDIS dei Laboratori di Catania dell’INFN hanno permesso di effettuare le analisi senza danneggiare i frammenti e ottenendo subito risultati interessanti.

Queste pergamene, il supporto su cui si scriveva al tempo, richiedevano, infatti, una grande quantità di acqua per essere preparate. L’analisi delle concentrazioni di cromo e bromo nelle acque del Mar Morto è risultata compatibile con la percentuale di queste sostanze contenuta nei campioni, e il confronto è stato possibile utilizzando fasci di protoni da 1.3 MeV, prodotti dall’acceleratore di particelle Tandem dei LNS dell’INFN.

I risultati sono stati presentati dal professor Pappalardo alla PIXE 2010 Conference di Surrey, in Gran Bretagna. Non resta ora che aspettare la seconda parte dello studio, quella che analizzerà la composizione degli inchiostri, per capire dove i testi sono stati scritti, e magari anche da chi.

I Rotoli del Mar Morto analizzati dal LANDIS (Laboratorio di Analisi Non Distruttive) - INFN (Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare) - LNS (Laboratori Nazionali del Sud)

lo strumento per studiare i rotoli

Una nuova tecnica per studiare i rotoli di Qumran, una località sul Mar Morto nello Stato d’Israele dove sono stati rinvenuti i frammenti più antichi del Vecchio Testamento e dei Vangeli. Per scoprire qual è la data esatta dei manoscritti e se sono originari della Palestina, saranno analizzati con i raggi Alfa dall’Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (Infn). Responsabile del progetto è Giuseppe Pappalardo, ricercatore dell’Infn di Catania.

Professor Pappalardo, ci può illustrare la metodologia utilizzata dalla sua equipe?

La nostra tecnica si chiama “Pixe-alfa”, acronimo inglese per “Emissione di raggi X indotta da particelle Alfa”. In pratica bombardiamo i campioni con le particelle Alfa prodotte da materiale radioattivo, nel nostro caso Curio o Polonio. Quando queste incontrano l’atomo lo ionizzano, cioè gli strappano alcuni elettroni, portandolo a emettere alcune radiazioni X la cui energia è caratteristica dell’atomo in esame. A partire da ciò, è possibile così ricostruire la composizione chimica del frammento, senza danneggiarlo né modificarlo. E dal momento che utilizziamo un apparecchio di soli 600/700 grammi, le analisi avvengono normalmente in loco senza la necessità di trasportare presso il nostro laboratorio il materiale. Occorre anche sottolineare che soltanto le parti superficiali vengono analizzate col nostro strumento senza interferenze con il substrato. Per le suddette ragioni il sistema “Pixe-alfa” è il più indicato per l’analisi non distruttiva di pigmenti, dipinti, affreschi, patine etc. Lo strumento “Pixe-alfa” è stato realizzato e brevettato  attraverso una collaborazione fra l’Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (Infn) e il Commissariato per l’Energia Atomica (Cea) francese. Attualmente è l’unico al mondo in grado di effettuare analisi di tipo “Pixe” con strumentazione portatile.

Finora in quali casi è stato utilizzato il metodo Pixe-alfa?

Fra gli interventi più significativi ricordiamo:

Analisi della famosa “Chartula di S: Francesco – unico documento manoscritto del Santo”- in previsione di una importante operazione di restauro conservativo;

Studio archeometrico degli affreschi del Palazzo di Nestore a Pylos in Grecia ai fini di individuare i pigmenti usati, ancora ai fini di un restauro;

Determinazione della composizione della lega di un ariete in bronzo conservato presso il Museo archeologico di Palermo. La quantità di piombo presente nella lega metallica è ritenuta essere fra gli elementi indicativi ai fini di risalire all’epoca della realizzazione (nel nostro caso se epoca romana o ellenistica).

Analisi, presso la biblioteca classense di Ravenna di un dipinto attribuito al Botticelli presente in un manoscritto del ‘400, dei Trionfi del Petrarca. Il nostro compito era verificare se il blu utilizzato dall’artista sia stato realizzato a partire da una velatura di lapislazzuli, una tecnica che concorre a caratterizzare le opere del Botticelli;

Caratterizzazione della patina di una armatura della Colchide, di presumibile epoca romana, ai fini della sua autenticazione.

Come procedono le analisi sui rotoli di Qumran e su quali parti delle Sacre Scritture vi state focalizzando?

Recentemente, in collaborazione con l’Istituto Bam di Berlino, abbiamo iniziato lo studio di alcuni frammenti dei ben noti rotoli del Mar Morto che rappresentino una delle più interessanti scoperte archeologiche degli ultimi decenni. I rotoli risalgono ad un periodo fra 150 A.C e 70 D.C. circa e si riferiscono prevalentemente al Vecchio Testamento. I frammenti di cui ci stiamo occupando provengono dai cosiddetti Rotoli del Tempio, che descrivono un tempio virtuale non realizzato; stiamo lavorando anche su alcuni piccoli frammenti provenienti più specificamente dalla zona di Qumran più prossima al Mar Morto.

Perché è così importante individuare l’esatta composizione chimica dei frammenti dell’Antico Testamento?

L’obiettivo della nostra ricerca è capire se questi reperti siano sempre rimasti dove sono stati trovati, cioè la stessa Palestina in cui sono ambientate le Sacre Scritture, oppure se siano stati portati lì da altre parti. Nel caso in cui l’ipotesi vera sia la prima, si tratterebbe di una garanzia dell’originalità e dell’autenticità di quei frammenti. In definitiva, come detto, mediante l’uso del nostro strumento si dovrà risalire alla presenza, sulla superficie dei frammenti, di elementi chimici caratteristici della zona di Qumran o di altre zone. I primi risultati saranno presentati prossimamente ad una Conferenza in Inghilterra a Guildford, tra il 27 giugno e il 2 luglio.

Avete mai pensato di applicare il vostro metodo anche alla Sindone?

Non siamo stati interpellati, e ovviamente non so quale sarebbe l’esito se utilizzassimo i raggi Alfa per studiare il materiale straordinario conservato a Torino. L’importante è essere aperti ai risultati delle ricerche, qualsiasi essi siano, anche perché la fede non può certo essere intaccata dai risultati di un’analisi chimica.

Fac-similé du Rouleau d’Isaïe : (Photo : Michael Falter/www.facsimile-editions.com).

Les manuscrits de Qumrân ! Ils ont fait couler beauccoup d’encre et provoqué tant de débats, depuis leur découverte en 1947. On ne peut pourtant résumer Qumrân à la belle histoire de sa découverte – un jeune bédouin à la recherche d’une chèvre tombe sur une grotte dans les falaises calcaires du Wadi Qumrân, au nord-ouest de la mer Morte (à l’époque en Jordanie).

On ne peut non plus réduire Qumrân aux querelles d’experts et aux déclarations passionnelles qu’ont provoquées les découvertes archéologiques à Khirbet Qumrân et leurs diverses interprétations, religieuses ou profanes, esséniennes ou non esséniennes. Car ce que révèlent d’abord et avant tout ces manuscrits de la mer Morte, c’est l’origine de l’Ancien Testament.

Parmi les 275 cavités fouillées à Qumrân, 11 grottes contenaient des manuscrits en hébreu et en araméen ; une vingtaine d’autres contenaient des objets contemporains du site. Certains rouleaux, enveloppés de tissu et conservés dans des jarres en terre cuite, étaient en bon état et n’ont guère présenté de difficultés d’identification. Dans d’autres cavités, au contraire, on ne trouva que des fragments de parchemins qu’il fallut d’abord classer, répertorier et photographier avant de pouvoir les publier.

«On dispose désormais de l’essentiel»

Pendant plus de soixante années, un énorme travail d’édition – entravé par les conflits politiques dans la région – a été mené par un comité international. Depuis 1991, ce comité d’une quarantaine de chercheurs est présidé par l’Israélien Emmanuel Tov (Université hébraïque de Jérusalem), aux côtés de l’Américain Eugene Ulrich (Université Notre-Dame en Pennsylvanie) et du Français Émile Puech (École biblique et archéologique française de Jérusalem, ou Ebaf).

Une vingtaine de rouleaux d’Isaïe a été retrouvée
Aujourd’hui, quelque 900 manuscrits ont été publiés en 40 volumes, et une traduction en français est disponible (1). « On dispose désormais de l’essentiel, même si quelques fragments peuvent peut-être encore se trouver dans des collections privées », estime Katell Berthelot, brillante spécialiste du judaïsme antique qui codirige la publication bilingue de la bibliothèque de Qumrân. Parmi ces 900 manuscrits, on trouve trois grands types d’écrits.

D’abord des textes bibliques, avec tous les livres de l’Ancien Testament (sauf celui d’Esther), notamment une quarantaine d’exemplaires de psautiers (mais aucun complet). L’ordre des psaumes n’était pas le même qu’aujourd’hui et, de plus, on en trouvait parfois 152 ou 153 – au lieu de 150.

« Émotionnellement, c’est extraordinaire de se dire que certains de ces textes ont pu passer entre les mains de Jésus, Pierre ou Paul », poursuit Katell Berthelot. On trouve également tous les prophètes connus aujourd’hui, avec cependant une prépondérance du grand prophète Isaïe. Une vingtaine de rouleaux d’Isaïe a été retrouvée, notamment deux rouleaux, longs de plus de sept mètres, que l’on peut admirer au Musée du Livre, à Jérusalem.

Ces rouleaux d’Isaïe ont un aspect « rafistolé » – selon l’expression de Laurent Hericher, conservateur en chef à la BNF –, avec des ratures ou des rattrapages d’oublis dans les marges.

Psaumes, Isaïe et Deutéronome : le « kit de base »

Enfin, toujours parmi les textes bibliques retrouvés à Qumrân, le Pentateuque (Torah) est très représenté, avec en particulier une trentaine d’exemplaires du Deutéronome (livre à caractère juridique), dans une forme assez proche de celle que l’on connaît.


On peut donc penser que les Psaumes, Isaïe et le Deutéronome – tel un « kit de base », selon l’expression de Michael Langlois, jeune philologue franco-américain de l’université de Strasbourg – étaient les trois livres bibliques les plus lus à Qumrân, et sans doute aussi dans toutes les synagogues de l’époque. Or ce sont ces trois livres de l’Ancien Testament qui sont le plus souvent cités dans les Évangiles et dans les Lettres de Paul.

Par ailleurs, ces textes bibliques qumrâniens présentent certaines différences avec les plus anciennes versions hébraïques connues jusque-là, appelées « massorétiques » – du nom des savants massorètes qui ont vocalisé la Torah aux IXe-Xe siècles.

Autre grand type d’écrits des rives de la mer Morte : les textes parabibliques, dits « apocryphes ». On a notamment découvert le Livre d’Hénoch, une grande apocalypse juive qui n’était connue que dans des versions éthiopienne et grecque.

Enfin, derniers types d’écrits : ceux propres à la communauté de Qumrân, dits « sectaires ». Parmi ces écrits communautaires, on range divers commentaires des livres bibliques ainsi qu’un « rouleau du Temple » – dont on ne sait toujours pas à quel usage il était destiné. Mais surtout, on y classe cinq exemplaires de la Règle de la communauté (longtemps appelée Manuel de discipline) dont certains termes posent bien des questions.

«Aujourd’hui, on réévalue à la baisse le nombre de textes communautaires»

Ainsi, le « maître de justice » (dirigeant la communauté) est décrit comme devant être « mis à mort » avec des « blessures » et des « transpercements ». Ce qui a fait dire à Robert Eisenman, professeur de religions proche-orientales à l’université de Long Beach (Californie) dans les années 1990, que les esséniens attendaient un Messie qui devait souffrir et mourir – sans affirmer pour autant que ce « maître de justice » pourrait être le Christ.

Le terme de « fils de Sadoq » a également interrogé : il apparaissait déjà dans le Document de Damas (découvert au Caire au début du XXe siècle) qui fait allusion à des juifs qui, ne supportant plus la corruption sacerdotale (à l’époque, seul un descendant de Sadoq pouvait être grand prêtre à Jérusalem), partent au désert en direction de Damas.

« Aujourd’hui, on réévalue à la baisse le nombre des textes initialement considérés comme communautaires », conclut Katell Berthelot en souhaitant que les chercheurs, qui disposent maintenant de l’ensemble des manuscrits, « réexaminent les théories à la lumière de l’ensemble ».

Actuellement des recherches portent sur le système calendaire, ainsi que sur les textes liturgiques et de sagesse. Car comme le dit Michael Langlois, autre représentant de cette nouvelle génération de qumrânologues francophones, « ce qui paraissait clair hier ne l’est plus du tout aujourd’hui ».


(1) La Bibliothèque de Qumrân, volume 1 : Torah-Genèse , sous la direction de Katell Berthelot, Thierry Legrand et André Paul, avec le texte original (hébreu ou araméen) et la traduction française (Cerf, 2007, 590 p., 89 €). Le volume 2 (Exode-Lévitique-Nombres) est attendu pour octobre 2010.