Cities

That
Built the
Bible

The

Robert R. Cargill

CITIES_10p.indd 3

1/22/16 3:38 PM


Copyright
Every effort has been made to obtain permissions for images, maps, and pieces
quoted, used, or adapted in this work. If any required acknowledgements have been
omitted, or any rights overlooked, it is unintentional. Please notify the publishers
of any omission, and it will be rectified in future editions. The credits on page 337
constitute a continuation of this copyright page.
Unless otherwise noted, all biblical quotations are taken from the New Revised
Standard Version, copyright 1989, Division of Education of the National Council
of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A.
the cities that built the bible. Copyright 2016 by Robert Cargill. All rights
reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used
or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the
case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information
address HarperCollins Publishers, 195 Broadway, New York, NY 10007.
HarperCollins books may be purchased for educational, business, or sales promotional use. For information please e-mail the Special Markets Department at
[email protected].
HarperCollins website: http://www.harpercollins.com
first edition
Layout by Laura Lind Design
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
isbn 9780062366740
16 17 18 19 20 rrd(h) 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

CITIES_10p.indd 4

1/22/16 3:38 PM


Dedication
For Roslyn
More every day

CITIES_10p.indd 5

1/22/16 3:38 PM

Contents

abbreviations

ix

Introduction
chapter 1 Phoenician Cities
chapter 2 Ugarit
chapter 3 Nineveh
chapter 4 Babylon
chapter 5 Megiddo
chapter 6 Athens
chapter 7 Alexandria
chapter 8 Jerusalem
chapter 9 Qumran
chapter 10 Bethleh.em and Nazareth
chapter 11 Rome
Conclusion

1
13
31
53
71
99
111
135
165
195
213
235
263

notes
Acknowledgments
Bibliography
scripture index
subject index
credits

269
301
303
319
323
337

CITIES_10p.indd 7

1/22/16 3:38 PM

CITIES_10p.indd 8

1/22/16 3:38 PM

Map of the eastern Mediterranean and Ancient Near East. Image courtesy Google Earth, Data SIO, NOAA, U.S. Navy, NGA, GEBCO,
Image Landsat.

Abbreviations
General
bce
Before the Common Era (same as bc)
ca. circa
ce
Common Era (same as ad)
cf. compare
chap. chapter
col. column
dss
Dead Sea Scrolls
Gk. Greek
hb
Hebrew Bible
Heb. Hebrew
lit. literally
lxx Septuagint
mt
Masoretic Text
nt
New Testament
ot
Old Testament
r. ruled
v(v). verse(s)

Bibliographic
AHI
ANET
COS
CTA
EA
FGrH
HAE

CITIES_10p.indd 9

Ancient Hebrew Inscriptions (Davies)

Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old
Testament (Pritchard)
Context of Scripture (Hallo and Younger)
Corpus tablettes alphabetiques (Herdner)
Tel el-Amarna Archive (Amarna Letters; Moran)
Die Fragmente der Griechischen Historiker (Jacoby)
Handbuch der althebrischen Epigraphik (Renz and
Rllig)

1/22/16 3:38 PM

[ x]
KTU

Abbreviations

Cuneiform Alphabetic Texts from Ugarit, Ras Ibn Hani,

and Other Places (Dietrich, Loretz, and Sanmartn)

Bible Books
Old Testament

Gen. Genesis
Exod. Exodus
Lev. Leviticus
Num. Numbers
Deut. Deuteronomy
Josh. Joshua
Judg. Judges
Ruth Ruth
1 Sam.
1 Samuel
2 Sam.
2 Samuel
1 Kings 1 Kings
2 Kings 2 Kings
1 Chron. 1 Chronicles
2 Chron. 2 Chronicles
Ezra Ezra
Neh. Nehemiah
Esth. Esther
Job Job
Ps(s). Psalms
Prov. Proverbs
Eccl.
Ecclesiastes (Qohelet)
Song
Song of Songs
Isa. Isaiah
Jer. Jeremiah
Lam. Lamentations

CITIES_10p.indd 10

1/22/16 3:38 PM

Abbreviations

[xi]

Ezek. Ezekiel
Dan. Daniel
Hos. Hosea
Joel Joel
Amos Amos
Obad. Obadiah
Jon. Jonah
Mic. Micah
Nah. Nahum
Hab. Habakkuk
Zeph. Zephaniah
Hag. Haggai
Zech. Zechariah
Mal. Malachi
Apocrypha

Tob. Tobit
Jth. Judith
Add. Esth. Additions to Esther
Wisd.
Wisdom of Solomon
Sir.
Sirach (Wisdom of Sirach, Ecclesiasticus)
Bar. Baruch
Let. Jer. Letter of Jeremiah
Pr. Azar. Prayer of Azariah and the Song of the Three Jews
Sus. Susanna
Bel.
Bel and the Dragon
1 Macc. 1 Maccabees
2 Macc. 2 Maccabees
1 Esd.
1 Esdras
2 Esd.
2 Esdras

CITIES_10p.indd 11

1/22/16 3:38 PM

[xii]
Pr. Man.
3 Macc.
4 Macc.

Abbreviations

Prayer of Manasseh
3 Maccabees
4 Maccabees

New Testament

Matt. Matthew
Mark Mark
Luke Luke
John John
Acts
Acts of the Apostles
Rom. Romans
1 Cor.
1 Corinthians
2 Cor.
2 Corinthians
Gal. Galatians
Eph. Ephesians
Phil. Philippians
Col. Colossians
1 Thess. 1 Thessalonians
2 Thess. 2 Thessalonians
1 Tim.
1 Timothy
2 Tim.
2 Timothy
Titus Titus
Philem. Philemon
Heb. Hebrews
James James
1 Pet.
1 Peter
2 Pet.
2 Peter
1 John
1 John
2 John
2 John
3 John
3 John
Jude Jude
Rev. Revelation

CITIES_10p.indd 12

1/22/16 3:38 PM

Introduction

ou have Nicole Kidman to thank for this book. In the fall

of 2004, I had the good fortune to be hired by Ms. Kidman
(yes, the Academy Awardwinning actress) to teach her a private
version of the Introduction to the Old Testament course I was
teaching at Pepperdine University.1 I kid you not. (For those of
you rolling your eyes at my name-dropping, Im telling you this
to demonstrate this books topic is of interest to everyoneeven
celebrities.) Not only did she prove to be wicked smartshe still
remembered her Latinbut she was kind, clever, and funny, and
she has one of the most caring hearts of anyone Ive ever met.
One day we met on a Culver Studios set where Ms. Kidman
was filming the movie Bewitched. During breaks in between
shooting, she and I would go to her trailer and do our course lessons. One day while reading the book of Genesis, Nicole asked a
simple question: Where did the Bible come from?
I didnt have an answer, at least not a simple one. And shes not
alone in wondering. Its a question weve probably all pondered at
some point. The Bible is the bestselling book in the United States;
chances are, most p eople reading this will have at least one copy at
home or on their computer, iPad, or smartphone. Whether we consider ourselves religious or not, we hear the Bible quoted everywhere
from pop culture to politics. Its part of the fabric of our nation. But
the elusive question remains: Where did it come from?
Ive spent over a decade formulating an answer to that question, and that answer is found throughout the pages of this book.
Also, now you know the answer to your book clubs first trivia
question: What was the author doing with Nicole Kidman in her

CITIES_10p.indd 1

1/22/16 3:38 PM

[ 2]

The Cities That Built the Bible

trailer? The answer is one that fulfills the dreams of men around
the world: reading the Bible. And Ms. Kidman, thank you. It was
truly an honor to work with you. I hope this book serves as an
adequate answer to your question.

Where Did the Bible Come From?

So, to answer the question about where the Bible came from,
we should start with the fact that the Bible did not one day just
magically appear. It did not float down from heaven as a complete
document. It was not revealed verbatim to a single person whose
utterances were then recorded, a claim that Islamic tradition makes
about the Quran. Rather, the Bibles contents were repeatedly argued over, voted on, and seldom decided upon with unanimity. In
fact, the early church councils rarely took up the issue of the canon
of the Bible and, instead, left the decision to certain prominent individuals tasked with reforming liturgical practices or creating copies
or translations of the official Bible for various political and religious
leaders. And when the church councils did issue decisions on the
canon of Scripture, those decisions were often not consistent from
one council to the next, so that many of those decisions arent reflected in the Bible we have today.
Furthermore, the creeds of the early church, like those stemming from the most famous of early church synods, the First
Council of Nicea, were actually declared before the contents of
the biblical canon were established. This means that the church
was making decrees prior to a decision about what officially belonged in the Bible. What this tells us is that the popular notion,
especially among religious conservatives, that the Bible is a blueprint for the church and that all decisions should be rooted in
Scripture is backward, as this was not the practice of the early
church. Rather, the church fathers decided what the church was
to believe based on some of the writings of the Bible with other
doctrines based on what they thought should or ought to be true.

CITIES_10p.indd 2

1/22/16 3:38 PM

Chapter 9

Qumran

he Dead Sea Scrolls are the greatest archaeological discovery of the twentieth century. They were discovered in caves
near the ancient settlement of Qumran, and despite never being
mentioned in the Bible, Qumran and the scrolls changed the
way we read and understand the Bible. The discovery of the
first scrolls in 1947 signaled the beginning of the end for the long
since debunked, yet lingering concept of what many called biblical inerrancy, which is the notion that the Bible is the perfect,
verbatim, inerrant, noncontradictory Word of God. The scrolls
provided us with tangible handwritten evidence that the text of
the Hebrew Bible has, in fact, changed throughout the years and
that there were different, some say competing, versions of the
biblical books early on in history.
The scrolls provided modern Bible translators and publishers
access to versions of the books of the Hebrew Bible that were a
thousand years older than any previously known copies of these
books. The fact that the text of the books of the Bible discovered
among the Dead Sea Scrolls is different from that in many of our
modern Bibles is evidence itself that the text of the Biblethe
Word of Godhas changed over the past two thousand years.
Thus, we can say that Qumran has become a key city in the development of the modern Bible we know today, as many versions of
the Bible published since the 1950s have taken into account what
weve learned from the scrolls; newer versions of the Bible often
side with the text of the Dead Sea Scrolls when traditional versions of biblical books preserve variant textual traditions.

CITIES_10p.indd 195

1/22/16 3:39 PM

[196]

The Cities That Built the Bible

The Dead Sea Scrolls

Up Close and Personal
In 2010, I was fortunate enough to host a National Geographic
Channel documentary entitled Writing the Dead Sea Scrolls. In the
show, I explored the question of who really wrote the Dead Sea
Scrolls. While filming Writing the Dead Sea Scrolls, I met Adolfo
Roitman, the curator of the Shrine of the Book on the campus of
the Israel Museum, where the Dead Sea Scrolls are housed and
displayed. I had been in the shrine before, but Dr. Roitman led me
to a place that few p eople have ever been: the underground vault
where the Dead Sea Scrolls are kept.
Behind a nondescript door inside the Shrine of the Book lies
a highly secure hallway protected by multiple secured gates and
doors, including a thick blast-proof door that protects these national treasures from a bomb attack. The high-tech hallway leads
to the archaeological Holy of Holies: the Dead Sea Scrolls vault.
Following Dr. Roitman through door after door reminded me of
the title sequence of the classic TV show Get Smart, only the doors
in the Dead Sea Scrolls vault required any number of keys, passwords, and codes from Dr. Roitman in order to open them. And
each door locked behind us as we passed through, just to ensure
that no one gets out without proper authorization.
I got the shivers as I followed Dr. Roitman into the vault
and not only because of the temperature-controlled climate. For
an archaeologist, this was an exhilarating experience. These were
the actual Dead Sea Scrolls. Fascination turned to veiled giddiness
when Dr. Roitman asked me to help him remove the Great Isaiah
Scroll (1QIsaa) from the vault and place it on the examination table.
I did so, careful to touch only the foam board on which the priceless
scroll was mounted. It might as well have been the ark of the covenant, such was the feeling of nearly overwhelming enthrallment
I was experiencing in that vault. And the ark is an apt comparison
in that the same penaltydeathawaits anyone who touches the
scrolls with their hands (or so I learned with a wink from Adolfo).

CITIES_10p.indd 196

1/22/16 3:39 PM

Qumran

[197]

The author in the underground scroll vault with Dr. Adolfo Roitman, the curator
of the Shrine of the Book in Jerusalem, where the Dead Sea Scrolls are housed.

Just then, to complete my fantasy experience, Dr. Roitman invited me to read from the Great Isaiah Scroll with him while the
camera crew filmed us. He asked me if I could make out some
letters toward the beginning of the scroll. As I worked through the
ancient script and read the words he was pointing to aloud, I found
myself reading Isaiah 2:4: They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; and nation shall not lift
up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.
I had chills. I had just read in the original Hebrew from the
oldest copy of any biblical manuscript known to humankind.
As we cut and our cameraman, Lawrence, lowered his camera, I
exhaled. I fought off tears, stunned at what I had just experienced.
Dr. Roitman looked at me and said, Not bad.
I replied, That is an important verse. Do you think well ever
experience this?
He looked me in the eye and replied hopefully, Pray for the
peace of Jerusalem.

CITIES_10p.indd 197

1/22/16 3:39 PM

[198]

The Cities That Built the Bible

The author reading the Great Isaiah Scroll (1QIsaa) in the underground
scroll vault with Dr. Adolfo Roitman, the curator of the Shrine of the Book in
Jerusalem, where the Dead Sea Scrolls are housed.

As we exited the vault, I didnt notice the gauntlet of doors. I

had just been behind the proverbial curtain with the high priest
of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and I had just read from a twenty-two-
hundred-year-old copy of the book of Isaiah. There are no words.
These Dead Sea Scrolls help us better understand the origin of
our Bible. But before we examine how the discovery of the scrolls
affects how we read our modern Bibles (and what our modern
Bibles actually say), let us first look at the (often comical) story of
the discovery of the scrolls as well as the controversies that have
surrounded the archaeological interpretation of Qumran.

The Discovery of the Scrolls

The tale of Qumran goes back to a legend about a Bedouin
sheepherder named Muh.ammad Ah.med el-H
. a-med, who was
nicknamed edh-Dhib, or the Wolf. The Bedouin are nomadic

CITIES_10p.indd 198

1/22/16 3:39 PM

Qumran

[199]

and seminomadic tribes of ethnic Arabs who typically occupy

the Arabian Peninsula. In my interactions with them, Ive found
them to be suspicious of city life, warmly hospitable, and possessing a deep, proud sense of tradition and tribal customs.
There are several Bedouin families of various tribes located east
of Jerusalem whose tents are visible as you descend down the Maale
Adumim, the section of Highway 1 leading east of Jerusalem down
toward the Dead Sea. There are also several Bedouin families who
operate tours in Wadi Rum on the way from Aqaba to Petra in
Jordan. I took a Bedouin tour of Wadi Rum with my Iowa students one summer following a season excavating at Tel Azeqah.
We spent the day hiking the Jordanian desert, climbing on mind-
blowing rock formations and through deep desert canyons, and in

A Bedouin cook at Rum Stars Camp in Wadi Rum cooks dinner in a zarb, which
uses the warmth of the desert sand to barbecue food.

CITIES_10p.indd 199

1/22/16 3:39 PM

[200]

The Cities That Built the Bible

the evening we danced the night away in a Bedouin camp. We fell

asleep under a blanket of stars in a traditional Bedouin enclosure
on the warm desert floor with bellies full of lamb and roasted vegetables that had been cooked in an underground barbecue called a
zarb. I kid you not; you must do this at least once in your life.
Returning to the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the story goes
that some time in the winter of 1946 or early in 1947, Muh.ammad
the Wolf and some pals were out grazing his sheep on the lands
just below the marl cliffs (the lime-rich mudstone that indicates
the cliffs underwater history) that contain what is now Cave 1.
On that fateful day, one adventuring member of Muh.ammad the
Wolf s flock wandered up into the cave. Climbing the precipitous
scarp leading up to the cave, Muh.ammad the Wolf threw a rock
into the cave in an attempt to scare the wayward sheep out of
the cave. He heard something shatter! Curious as to what hed
broken, Muh.ammad the Wolf climbed up into the cave and discovered that he had accidentally shattered a ceramic jar, which
had apparently been exposed, but yet (suspiciously) not been shattered (or even noticed) for two millenniauntil now.
For this reason, some argue that parts of the story of the discovery of the scrolls were invented to cover up the fact that Bedouin
regularly seek out (read: loot) caves, ancient settlements, and excavation sites in order to find archaeological artifacts that can be
sold to antiquities dealers (both licensed and on the black market)
for a profit. This still happens today, and perhaps more so now
than in decades past.
At Tel Azeqah, where I excavate with my Iowa students, we
hire a guard to watch the site at night so that looters dont steal the
exposed in situ objects that are in the process of being excavated.
One night, our guard never showed up, and that very evening
looters came to our site and wrested from it a number of exposed
vessels from a productive archaeological square. In the morning,
we discovered small holes that pockmarked the square, the result
of looters with metal detectors and hand spades looking for coins
that can be harvested and sold on eBay or on the black market.

CITIES_10p.indd 200

1/22/16 3:39 PM

Qumran

[201]

This happens to every archaeological site every year. So the tale

about a shepherd accidentally discovering a jar and scrolls in
caves may have been concocted to disguise the fact that the first of
the Dead Sea Scrolls were, to be blunt, looted.1
Subsequent rummaging led the Bedouin herdsmen to discover
ten jars, several of which contained rolled-up pieces of leather.
Muh.ammad the Wolf took the scrolls to a Bethleh.em antiquities dealer named Ibrahim Ijha, who returned them, fearing they
were stolen from a synagogue.
Muh.ammad the Wolf then took the scrolls to a Bethleh.em cobbler named Khalil Eskander Shahin, nicknamed Kando, who
also dealt in antiquities on the side. Kando saw the Semitic writing on the scrolls and immediately purchased the scrolls from
Muh.ammad the Wolf.
Because of the prospective danger of possessing potentially illicit antiquities originating from desert Bedouin, Kando had a
colleague sell the scrolls on his behalf, and soon four scrolls were
purchased by the local leader of the Syrian Orthodox Church,
Metropolitan Athanasius Yeshue Samuel, also referred to as Mar
Samuel, for 24 ($97 U.S. at the time). This buyer, Mar Samuel,
could not read all the ancient characters, and so in November
of 1947 he invited Hebrew University professor of archaeology
Eleazar Sukenik to Jerusalem to examine and, he hoped, decipher
the scrolls and confirm their authenticity and value, so that Mar
Samuel could sell them, with the proceeds going to his church.
Sukenik was so taken with the scrolls and their significance
that he purchased two of the remaining three scrolls (1QH, or
Hodayot, also called the Hymns Scroll, and 1QM, or Milh.amah,
the War Scroll) being shopped around by dealers on behalf of the
newly formed State of Israel. Many Jews saw tremendous symbolism in the timing of the purchase of these newly discovered
scrolls, as they were acquired on November 29, 1947the very
day that the United Nations voted in favor of UN Resolution
181(II), the Partition Plan for Palestine, which created the modern Jewish State of Israel.2

CITIES_10p.indd 201

1/22/16 3:39 PM

[202]

The Cities That Built the Bible

This is why, in addition to their scholarly value, the Dead Sea

Scrolls have such national value to Israel; they are understood
as symbolic refounding documents of the Jewish state. In the
same way that the earliest Dead Sea Scrolls were composed during the last time an independent state of Israel existed (i.e., the
Hasmonean period beginning in 141 bce), so too does the discovery and reacquisition of the Dead Sea Scrolls represent to many
the refounding of an independent Jewish state.
About a month after the UN voted to partition Palestine,
Sukenik purchased the third remaining scroll, which was a second copy of the biblical book of Isaiah (1QIsab). Meanwhile, Mar
Samuel feared that the war in Palestine would deter the highest
bidders from Europe and America from purchasing his scrolls, so
to maximize his profits he smuggled the scrolls to Beirut, Lebanon.3
Unsatisfied with the bids that were coming in for his scrolls in
Beirut, Mar Samuel then smuggled the scrolls to the safety of
Worcester, Massachusetts, and later to Washington D.C., where he
put them on display in the Library of Congress to attract buyers.
Still unsatisfied with the offers, Mar Samuel did what you do
when you wanted to sell something in the 1950s: he placed an ad
in the paper. On June 1, 1954, an ad in the Wall Street Journal read:
The ad placed in the
Wall Street Journal
by Mar Samuel
attempting to sell the
Dead Sea Scrolls.

CITIES_10p.indd 202

1/22/16 3:39 PM

Qumran

[203]

It is still debated today whether this ad in the paper was an act of

lunacy or genius. As it turned out, Mar Samuel did end up attracting some attention for his scrolls. Eleazar Sukeniks son, Yigael
Yadin, a recently retired Israel Defense Forces general, had used
his keen knowledge of the land of Israel to start a second career as
an archaeologist. Yadin wanted Mar Samuels scrolls, but couldnt
simply make a bid on them, as once Mar Samuel realized that
the newly formed Israeli government was in the market for his
scrolls, the price would skyrocket.
Yadin used intermediaries who posed as representatives for a
private collector to negotiate the purchase. He also employed his
friend, Harry Orlinsky, who, under the name Mr. Green, authenticated the scrolls as worthy of the asking price. When the
charade was complete, Yadin had purchased Mar Samuels four
scrolls: 1QIsaa, or the Great Isaiah Scroll, a copy of the book of the
prophet Isaiah; 1QpHab, or the Commentary on Habakkuk; 1QS,
the Manual of Discipline, which is also known as the Community
Rule; and what is today known as 1QapGen, or the Genesis
Apocryphon, an Aramaic and highly elaborative rewrite of the primordial and patriarchal stories from Genesis. Yadin paid $250,000
for the scrolls, the lions share of which was proudly contributed
by David Samuel Gottesman, a Jewish philanthropist, who would
later be appointed as one of the trustees of the Shrine of the Book.
And that was just the beginning. It wasnt long before everyones attention turned toward the ancient settlement of Khirbet
Qumran, buried atop a plateau next to a cluster of the scroll caves.
It is this small settlement of Qumran to which we turn next.

The Excavation of Qumran

It didnt take long before official excavations were begun at
Khirbet Qumran to determine if anything could be learned from
the site sitting in the midst of the caves that had preserved the
scrolls. It is here, with the archaeology of Qumran, which sits atop

CITIES_10p.indd 203

1/22/16 3:39 PM

[204]

The Cities That Built the Bible

The famous Cave 4 at Qumran, as seen from the visitors viewpoint south of the
Khirbet Qumran settlement.

a plateau on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea, that some of the
nastiest battles in the history of biblical scholarship have taken
place. These battles are shaped by one central question: Who
wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls?
The leaders of the first excavation of QumranGerald
Lankester Harding, a British archaeologist and director of the
Department of Antiquities of Jordan from 1936 to 1956, and
Father Roland de Vaux, director of the French Dominican cole
Biblique et Archologique Franaise in Jerusalembegan excavating Qumran in December 1951 and excavated the site for five
seasons. It didnt take long for Harding and de Vaux to form an
opinion about the remains of Qumran.
In 1956, following a theory advanced by Eleazar Sukenik prior
to the excavations, de Vaux endorsed what has come to be known
as the Qumran-Essene Hypothesis, which postulates that a little-
known group of Jewish sectarians living between Jerusalem and
the Dead Sea called the Essenes built the settlement at Qumran
and wrote the scrolls that had been hidden in the caves surrounding the site. De Vaux argued that the residents of Qumran were
responsible for the scrolls following his discovery of two inkwells
in a room he dubbed the Scriptorium and another inkwell in

CITIES_10p.indd 204

1/22/16 3:39 PM

Qumran

[205]

an adjacent room. Thus, de Vaux concluded that the settlement

at Qumran was a sectarian Jewish settlement built by highly observant religious Jews in the second century bce who practiced
communal living and self-subsistence and wrote and copied scrolls
for their own personal study and governance. He maintained that
members of the sect hid the scrolls in the nearby caves when the
Romans invaded in 66 ce. The Romans attacked Qumran and the
residents never returned to collect their hidden scrolls, which lay
dormant until their auspicious discovery in 1947 by Muh.ammad
the Wolf (and the hordes of archaeologists, spelunkers, searchers,
and scavengers who followed).

A view of the Qumran plateau visitors lookout from inside Cave 4.

CITIES_10p.indd 205

1/22/16 3:39 PM

[206]

The Cities That Built the Bible

Other scholars since de Vaux, including myself, disagree with the

Qumran-Essene Hypothesis. Some scholars argue that, although
sectarian Jews may have lived at Qumran, they may not have been
as monastic as the Dominican Father de Vaux may have believed them to be. Other scholars and I believe that the site was
initially built for an entirely different purpose, namely, as a
Hasmonean military fort or lookout post, which was abandoned
and later reoccupied by a Jewish sectarian group who may or may
not have been the Essenes and who did not necessarily write all of
the scrolls, but were perhaps responsible for writing or copying a
few of them.
Another group of scholars argues that Qumran had nothing
whatsoever to do with the Dead Sea Scrolls, and because of this
the site should be interpreted secularly, without any sectarian
understandings tainting its interpretation. They argue various
Jewish refugees fleeing the destruction of Jerusalem placed the
scrolls in caves along the shore of the Dead Sea, and that whatever
was going on at Qumran had no connection to the scrolls.
So essentially the questionand the academic squabblecomes
down to this: Were the Dead Sea Scrolls composed, copied, or
collected at Qumran? Or did Jews who had nothing to do with
Qumran hide them in the various caves? This question has been
debated so vociferously that one participant in the debate actually
crossed the line into cybercriminal activity.

The Curse of the Dead Sea Scrolls

The blood sport that is Qumran scholarship and what many dub the
curse of the Dead Sea Scrolls continue. The scrolls were at the center of a recent criminal court case that landed the son of one scholar
who has written about the scrolls in prison!
I was personally involved in the case of Dr. Raphael Golb, a
lawyer and the son of a University of Chicago specialist in medieval Judaism, Norman Golb, who was the author of a book
entitled Who Wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls? In the book, Norman

CITIES_10p.indd 206

1/22/16 3:39 PM

Qumran

[207]

Golb, like many scholars before him, made arguments that contested the prevailing Qumran-Essene Hypothesis.4 The book was
dismissed by most Qumran and scrolls scholars at the timea
fact that Norman Golb, and later his son, did not appreciate.
With the rise of the Internet, Norman Golbs son began using
the alias Charles Gadda and a number of other aliases in an
attempt to advocate anonymously on his fathers behalf. Using
these aliases, Raphael Golb created blog sites that criticized scholars working with a traveling exhibition of the Dead Sea Scrolls
making its way through U.S. museums. Each new blog would be
accompanied by a massive anonymous e-mail campaign targeting museums hosting scrolls exhibitions and universities where
faculty affiliated with the exhibitions taught. The e-mails, addressed to any number of administrators at these institutions,
criticized the scholars for essentially being wrong about Qumran
(because they did not accept Norman Golbs theories) and chastised the museums for not inviting Norman Golb to speak
at them.
E-mails obtained from Raphael Golbs computer during the
police investigation included messages from his father, Norman
Golb, and his mother offering advice and instructions about
what to say and how to avoid getting caught. One e-mail from
Raphael Golb to his mother read, By the way, if Dad has some
comment on the latest Charles Gadda exchange, he can send it
through your email, that way there would be no trace of it in his
account.5 A response from his mother read, We cant send via
Dads email so well send via mine.6 And however trollish this
behavior may seem, his lack of success in promoting his fathers
theory led him to cross the line into criminal activity.7
During the anonymous e-mail campaign, Raphael Golb used
an alias to target one of his fathers old academic rivals, NYUs
Lawrence Schiffman, and accused him (anonymously, of course)
of plagiarizing Norman Golb. Raphael Golb then engaged in activities that the State of New York determined to be criminal and
for which he was charged, arrested, and found guilty.8

CITIES_10p.indd 207

1/22/16 3:39 PM

[208]

The Cities That Built the Bible

Raphael Golb was arrested by the NYPD on the morning of

March 5, 2009, and charged with fifty-one felony and misdemeanor
counts of identity theft, forgery, criminal impersonation, aggravated harassment, and the unauthorized use of a computer in his
campaign against a number of Dead Sea Scrolls scholars, including
Dr. Schiffman and me.9 Having been in the process of creating a
3-D virtual reality reconstruction of Qumran as part of my UCLA
dissertation (with which Dr. Golb and his son disagreed), I was
asked to provide reconstructions and movies to a number of museums hosting scrolls exhibitions.
When Raphael Golb began targeting me personally in his
Internet campaign, I used my tech skills to track the massive list
of aliases, e-mail addresses, and IP addresses he had used in his
campaign against scroll scholars. I handed my findings over to the
NYPD, and on September 24, 2010, I was asked to testify against
Raphael Golb during his trial, in which I was cross-examined (and
yelled at a lot) by none other than civil rights defense attorney Ron
Kuby (of The Big Lebowski fame).
On September 30, 2010, Raphael Golb was found guilty of
two felony and twenty-eight misdemeanor counts. He was later
sentenced to six months in prison and automatically disbarred
from the New York State Bar Association. Some of these charges
were later overturned on appeal and Golbs prison sentence was
reduced to two months in prison and three years probation for
being found guilty on nineteen counts of identity theft and criminal impersonation. As of the publication of this book, Raphael
Golb is still out of prison pending multiple additional appeals.
Raphael Golb was sentenced to prison for criminal acts he committed against another scholar, which stemmed from a debate over
who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls. That is how crazy Dead Sea Scrolls
scholarship got at its ugly apex. It also shows that the scrolls are a
topic of great importance to a number of people, not just because
of the implications of the archaeological debate, but because of how
the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls fundamentally altered our
perception of the creation of the Bible, which well explore next.

CITIES_10p.indd 208

1/22/16 3:39 PM

Qumran

[209]

How the Dead Sea Scrolls

Affect the Bible
The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls caused shock waves throughout the world of biblical studies because they not only changed the
way we read the Bible; they quite literally changed what the Bible
says! The Dead Sea Scrolls are both powerful and controversial,
because they provide hard evidence that the text of the Bible was
changed early and often. Although many p eople touted the discovery of the scrolls as evidence of the reliability of the text of the Bible,
because well over 90 percent of the text from the copies of biblical
books discovered among the scrolls is similar to the text of the Bibles
we have today, the fact that they are not 100 percent identical proves
the point that the text of the Bible has changed over time.
The Dead Sea Scrolls demonstrate to us that the texts that became the Bible were literary attempts to convey ideas about God
and his activity in history, and the words used to convey these
ideas could (and did) vary from manuscript to manuscript. And
this is okay!
The important thing to remember is that these corrections and
changes were not made by skeptics and those who hated Scripture,
but by those who gave their lives to preserve it. These copyists
were faithful Jews. Copyists and editors changed the text based on
a variety of factors from personal preference to the correction of
perceived errors, but ultimately all changes were made in order to
make the Bible align with what the authors of the scrolls believed.
The Dead Sea Scrolls revelation about the changing nature of
early biblical texts does not challenge the faith of Jews and Chris
tians who read the Bible as a record of Gods activity in history.
The scrolls do, however, destroy any lingering fundamentalist
notion that the text of the Bible we have today is inerrant or
unchanged over time, as Ill demonstrate shortly.
The science of identifying changes to copied and translated
texts and then attempting to identify a reason for these changes
is part of a discipline within biblical studies called redaction

CITIES_10p.indd 209

1/22/16 3:39 PM

[210]

The Cities That Built the Bible

criticism. Below I offer a few of many examples of how the text

of the Dead Sea Scrolls differs from the text of the Bible we had
before their discovery.
There are lots of places where the Dead Sea Scrolls help us
decide which biblical manuscript tradition is better when there
is a disagreement between manuscripts. An example of this is the
differing accounts of the Philistine champion Goliaths height.
First Samuel 17:4 in the Masoretic Text of the Hebrew Bible says,
And there came out from the camp of the Philistines a champion
named Goliath, of Gath, whose height was six cubits and a span.
A cubit is about 18 inches, or 1 feet, and a span is half of a
cubit. So six cubits and a span is about 9 feet tall, which means
the head of a person this tall would almost touch a regulation
NBA basketball rim. Thats a giantbigger than Shaq, bigger
than Andre! So the Hebrew Bible says that Goliath was six cubits
and a span, or 9 feet 9 inches tall.
However, the Septuagints translation of that same verse (1
Sam. 17:4) says that Goliaths height was four (Gk. tessaron, ) cubits and a span, or 6 feet 9 inches tall. Granted, this is
still very tallcertainly tall enough to play center in the Philistine
Basketball Associationbut it isnt the inhuman 9 feet 9 inches
that Goliath is said to be in the Hebrew text. And before you
dismiss the Septuagints version as a mistake, remember that the
Septuagint is the Bible of the New Testament authors, which
they quote far more often than the Hebrew Bible. Furthermore,
Josephus supports the Septuagints reading in Antiquities 6.9.1
(6:171) when he says, Goliath, of the city of Gath, a man of vast
bulk, for he was of four (Gk. tessaron, ) cubits and a span
in tallness. Josephus supports the Septuagints reading, and the
Hebrew tradition appears to be the outlier.
So which is it? Is Goliath six cubits and a span (9 feet 9) or four
cubits and a span (6 feet 9)?
The Dead Sea Scrolls provide another source against which
to compare biblical accounts. In a copy of 1 Samuel discovered in
Qumran Cave 4 (4QSama), the verse reads, His height was four

CITIES_10p.indd 210

1/22/16 3:39 PM

Qumran

[211]

(Heb. arba, )cubits and a span. So the Dead Sea Scrolls

help us solve the mystery of just how tall Goliath actually was;
he was a big 6-foot-9 man. Given that the average height of players in the NBA is a little over 6 feet 7, Goliath would have been
truly considered a giant among menjust not a 10-footer as the
Hebrew Bible says.
Another discrepancy between versions is in Deuteronomy 32:8,
where the Masoretic Text says that God divided the nations according to the children of Israel, the Septuagint says according
to the angels of God, and 4Q37 of the Dead Sea Scrolls says
according to the children of God. Or consider that the Dead
Sea Scrolls (11QPsa, the Psalms Scroll) and the Septuagint supply
an entire extra verse in between vv.13 and 14 in Psalm 145; this
verse is missing in the Masoretic Text of the Hebrew Bible. Once
again, this serves as evidence that there were multiple manuscript
traditions in the first centuries bce and ce and that the version in
your Bible may be the minority and, dare I say, erroneous version.
Thus, we learn from the Dead Sea Scrolls that those who copied them either had different manuscript traditions of the biblical
texts or felt free to substitute and change certain words as they
pleased. Either way, it is evidence that the words that make up the
Word of God were actually somewhat fluid and not as fixed in
the first centuries bce and ce as some would like to believe.

Although the Dead Sea Scrolls are significant because they are the
oldest known copies of the books of the Hebrew Bible by over a
thousand years, they are also politically important because their
discovery and acquisition are intertwined with the very formation of the modern state of Israel.10 They also have caused great
controversy in scholarly circles, which has even led one person to
criminal activity!
The scrolls give us an abundance of evidence that the text of
the Bible was changed frequently as it was copied and that these
variant copies often became manuscript traditions of their own.

CITIES_10p.indd 211

1/22/16 3:39 PM

[212]

The Cities That Built the Bible

Thus, although Qumran is never mentioned in the Bible, the

scrolls discovered in the caves surrounding the site have directly
helped build the Bible we read today, often because the Dead Sea
Scrolls provide variant traditions or expansions that are as informative to us today as they were to the Jewish sectarians who wrote
them two millennia ago.

CITIES_10p.indd 212

1/22/16 3:39 PM

Notes

[293]

standing of the Hebrew poetic parallelism in Zech. 9:9, which states

that Jesus is riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. While
Mark and Luke rightly understand this as a parallel poetic description
of the same animal, Matthew mistakenly sees it as two separate animals
and tells his story with Jesus riding both animals. Its the equivalent of
my wife, Roslyn, writing me a love poem saying, I love my husband,
I love my broad-shouldered, handsome man, and a friend asking, I
know your wife loves you, but who is that other handsome man your
wife also loves?
19. Luke states that as a child Jesus visited Jerusalem on the eighth day
after his birth, as was the custom for newborn Jewish males (2:22), and
at age twelve the lost prepubescent Jesus was discovered by his parents
sitting among the teachers in the Temple (2:4150).
20. Eusebius of Caesarea, Life of Constantine 3:2541.
21. Cf. Mark. 15:26; Matt. 27:37; Luke 28:38; John 19:19. Note that John
19:20 states that the inscription was written in Hebrew, in Latin, and
in Greek. The Latin INRI is actually an acronym standing for Iesus
Nazarenus, Rex Iudaeorum, meaning Jesus the Nazarene, King of
the Jews.
22. Socrates of Constantinople, Ecclesiastical History 1.17.
23. Twain, Innocents Abroad, chap.35. Read it online at https://www.guten
berg.org/files/3176/3176-h/3176-h.htm.

Chapter 9: Qumran
1. For an excellent summary of the discovery of the dss, see Davies,
Brooke, and Callaway, Complete World of the Dead Sea Scrolls. See also
the Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library page on the discovery of
the scrolls at http://www.deadseascrolls.org.il/learn-about-the-scrolls
/discovery-and-publication?locale=en_US.
2. Of course, the UN vote was immediately followed by the 194748 Civil War
in Mandatory Palestine, which, following the end of the British Mandate
in Palestine on May 15, 1948, immediately led to the full-scale 1948 Arab-
Israeli War, which the Israelis refer to as their War of Independence and
Palestinians refer to as al-Nakba, or The Catastrophe.
3. Remember, the caves around Qumran where the scrolls were discovered were considered part of the Kingdom of Transjordan, which had
captured the West Bank during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. And because the Director of the Department of Antiquities of Jordan headed
the excavations at Qumran, Mar Samuel feared potential interference
from the Jordanian government.
4. See Robert Cargill, The Fortress at Qumran: A History of Interpretation.

CITIES_10p.indd 293

1/22/16 3:39 PM

[294]

Notes

5. See page 35 of New York District Attorney, The P

eople of the State of
New York v. Raphael Golb, Indictment No. 2721/2009, Affirmation
in Response to the Defendants Motions to Dismiss, Motion to Suppress
Evidence Recovered via Search Warrant, and Request for an Advisory
Opinion, Exhibit C: Summary of, and Excerpts of, Certain Email Communications, Jan. 19, 2010.
6. New York District Attorney, The People of the State of New York v.
Raphael Golb, Indictment No. 2721/2009, 35.
7. See Leland, Online Battle Over Sacred Scrolls.
8. See Steve Kolowich, Harassment of Dead Sea Scroll Scholars Leads to
Arrest of Professors Son, and The Fall of an Academic Cyberbully.
9. In one e-mail exchange between Raphael Golb (posing as alias Robert
Dworkin) and his brother, Joel Golb, concerning me, Joel Golb
wrote, Clearly, for all who read this, one of the purposes of Dworkins
devastating letter will be, precisely, to destroy the career prospects of a really nice guy. See page 17, 78 of New York District Attorney, The
People of the State of New York v. Raphael Golb, Indictment No.
2721/2009, Affirmation in Response to the Defendants Motions to
Dismiss, Motion to Suppress Evidence Recovered via Search Warrant,
and Request for an Advisory Opinion, Exhibit C: Summary of, and
Excerpts of, Certain Email Communications, Jan. 19, 2010.
10. The Israel Antiquities Authority has recently added interactive digital
high-resolution scans of several of the major dss, which are available
for free on your browser at the IAA website, http://www.deadseascrolls
.org.il/. Pnina Shor and Shai Halevi have done magnificent work overseeing the photography of the scrolls and making them available to the
public for study.

Chapter 10: Bethleh.em and Nazareth

1. Justin Martyr, Dialogue of Justin, 23334.
2. Isa. 33:16 in the lxx reads:
(houtos oikesei en hupselo spelaio petras ischuras), which in
English reads: he shall dwell in a high cave of a strong rock.
3. Origen of Alexandria, Contra Celsum 1:51 (Origen, Contra Celsus,
395669 [41819]).
4. Pummer, Early Christian Authors on Samaritans and Samaritanism, 431.
5. Hamilton, Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem.
6. Bethleh.em is also called Efrat, which means fertile or fruitful (cf.
Gen. 35:16; 48:7; Ruth 4:11). W. F. Albright suggests that the name
Bethleh.em originates from the Canaanite version of the fertility deities

CITIES_10p.indd 294

1/22/16 3:39 PM

If you liked this excerpt, you can

purchase a print or ebook copy of
The Cities That Built the Bible
anywhere books and ebooks are sold,
including these retailers: