Saturday, October 31, 1998

Dead Sea Scrolls scholar to speak at McMurry

By LORETTA FULTON

Senior Staff Writer

The Dead Sea Scrolls may sound as lifeless as their name to laymen, but spending time with Dr. Ronald S. Hendel can change your mind.

Hendel, associate professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Southern Methodist University, will be guest speaker Monday and Tuesday for the Sikes-Melugin Lectureship in Religious Studies at McMurry University.

The public is invited to all the presentations, free of charge, at 7 p.m. Monday and 9:30 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. Tuesday, all in the Mabee Room of the United Methodist Campus Center.

The 2:30 session on Tuesday will be a panel discussion featuring Hendel and biblical scholars from Abilene Christian, Hardin-Simmons, and McMurry universities. The religion department at McMurry will offer one-half of one Continuing Education Credit at no charge for anyone attending all the sessions.

Hendel is a frequent speaker on the scrolls and has been somewhat surprised at the response.

"It seems to be a topic people are very interested in," he said.

The scrolls were discovered in caves in 1948 by shepherd boys in the area of the Qumran community outside Jerusalem. The caves were excavated over the next 11 years, first by Bedouins and later by archaeologists.

"There could still be caves to be discovered," Hendel said, but that is doubtful.

Although the find, which has been termed "the greatest archaeological discovery of modern time," turned out to be quite profitable for the Bedouin tribes, the youngsters who found them weren't so elated. They were looking for buried treasure and didn't realize what they found was, indeed, a treasure.

"They were really disappointed," Hendel said.

The fragments are housed in the Rockefeller Museum in Jerusalem and in a museum there built especially for the scrolls called The Shrine of the Book.

Although Hendel has been to Jerusalem and has done extensive research based on the scrolls, he has never actually handled them. The fragments are preserved between glass plates and are difficult to decipher.

"Most of them are just little fragments eaten by worms," Hendel aid. "It really leaves you hungry for more."

Even though he hasn't actually touched the scroll fragments, Hendel has done exhaustive research from official publications containing the scrolls. His interest is in textual criticism which compares the scrolls with the original text of the Hebrew Scriptures.

Interestingly, in nearly every case, some minor discrepancies show up, he said.

"It's usually quite minor, but some are quite intriguing," Hendel said.

In most cases an error was made in copying a text. Sometimes a word was left out or even changed, but scholars have not found any major discrepancies, certainly not of the magnitude of an English translation published in the early 1600s that came to be known as the "Adulterer's Bible."

No doubt some proofreader's head rolled when it was discovered that the "not" was omitted from the commandment: "Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery."

Although comparisons between the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Hebrew texts have revealed some disagreements, none of that magnitude has surfaced.

"We don't have anything of that sort of consequence," Hendel said.

Hendel has published numerous articles on the scrolls, has contributed to various publications, and is in the process of writing a two-volume commentary on the Book of Genesis for the Anchor Bible series.

One contribution he will make comes in Genesis 4:8, which in some translations merely says, "Cain said to his brother Abel" without elaborating on what was said.

"I think I can make a pretty good case for what Cain said to Abel," Hendel said, based on study of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Some scholars question whether the Greek translation of the Hebrew text, "Let us go into the open country," is correct.

Hendel now is convinced the translation is accurate.

"It's pretty clear that was the original reading," he said.

Hendel's primary interests as a scholar are the Book of Genesis and ancient Israelite religion. He earned a doctorate at Harvard University in 1985 from the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations. One of his professors was on the committee that put the Dead Sea Scroll pieces together.

"I just absorbed my interest from him," Hendel said.

Perhaps of most interest to laymen is the historical context of the scrolls. They were written in the time of Jesus and Paul and help people understand the religious ideas and culture of the time, Hendel said.

"It fills us in on what their religious world was all about," he said.

Most Bible scholars agree that the discovery was the greatest find of the 20th century, but what intrigues them even more is what the future holds.

"We could find something tomorrow that could be even better," Hendel said.