The validity of the pre-Christian date ascribed to the recent discovery of ancient scrolls comprising the Book of Isaiah is further beclouded by the suppression of the Scroll of the Haftorat, a manuscript supposedly found by a wandering Bedouin in a half-closed Dead Sea cave with the manuscript of the Book of Isaiah, Prof. Solomon Zeitlin of the Dropsie College charged here today.
The charge continues Dr. Zeitlin’s controversy with such well-known scholars as Dr. F.W. Albright, Professor of Semitic Languages at Johns Hopkins University; Professor Eleazar L. Sukenik of Hebrew University, Jerusalem; Dr. Millar Burrows of Yale University and Dr. John C. Trevor of Duke University, who have expressed the opinion that the Book of Isaiah, and the other discovered manuscripts, are of true pre-Christian vintage.
Dr. Zeitlin, basing his charge of the suppression of the Haftorat on the testimony of T. Wechsler, a Palestinian authority on Biblical antiquities, says that the Scroll of the Haftorat, when “produced for the scholars of the world will be another proof of the lateness of the other scrolls, and it will show from where they came. I believe that study of the Haftorat will support my contention that the scrolls were planted in the cave and that they date from a late period. Hence they are of no value whatsoever for the history of Judaism and early Christianity.”
Mr. Wechsler has stated that in the summer of 1947, he was taken as an expert on Hebrew antiquities to the convent of the Archbishop of the Syrian Convent in the Old City of Jerusalem to give his opinion on the authenticity and age of some newly-discovered Hebrew manuscripts. In the presence of H. St. Stephen of the Library of the Museum of Rockefeller, he was shown two manuscripts, one of which he recognized as the Book of Isaiah and the other a Book of Haftorat.
At that time, Mr. Wechsler told the Archbishop that the Haftorat scroll was not of great antiquity, that he believed the scrolls to have been taken from a geniza (a depository for the burial of sacred Hebrew scrolls) of a synagogue from one of the countries adjoining Palestine. In an article in the December, 1949, issue of Haolam, published in Jerusalem, Mr. Wechsler expresses the opinion that the Archbishop decided to hide the Haftorat scroll because it might cast doubt on the antiquity of the Book of Isaiah and “spoil the business.”
Dr. Zeitlin, one of the world’s leading authorities on the period of the second Hebrew Commonwealth, the era preceding the time of Jesus, says that the revelation of this new fact “should give food for thought to those who still believe that the scrolls were placed in the cave near the Dead Sea during the pre-Christian period.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
