SCROLLS EXHIBITION MAY BE RECORD BREAKER
Hundreds of enquiries from Britain and mainland Europe have poured into
Glasgow Museums about the exhibition Scrolls from the Dead Sea which will be
staged at the city's flagship Museum and Art Gallery, Kelvingrove from May 1 to
August 30. The exhibition will be the first and only showing in the UK.
"Indications are that visitor figures may well be among the highest the
museum has ever had," says Henry Diamond, chairman of Israel 50 Glasgow
and the man who negotiated the exhibition with the Israel Antiquities Authority
in Jerusalem.
|
A complementary exhibition of religious manuscripts and printed materials
from Glasgow Libraries ranging from the 12th to the 16th century will also be
staged at Kelvingrove
Glasgow's initiative in attracting the scrolls has been praised by Dr
Jonathan Sacks, Britain's Chief Rabbi, The Israel Ambassador Mr Moshe Raviv,
Cardinal Thomas Winning, leader of Scotland's Roman Catholics, The Rt Rev.
Alexander McDonald, Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland
and academics.
Glasgow University's Department of Theology and Religious Studies has
organised a series of Study Days in May, June and July in association with the
scrolls exhibition and Edinburgh University will stage an international
conference on the scrolls on May 6 and 7. The exhibition will go from Glasgow
to Paris and Cologne before returning to Jerusalem early next year. |
one of the
Dead Sea Scrolls |
The nine scrolls coming to Glasgow, all on parchment, will be accompanied by
silver coins, a limestone measuring cup and pottery plates, goblets and jugs.
Pots in which some of the scrolls were found will also be seen.
One of the scrolls, more than three feet long, is the Book of Leviticus,
the third book of the sacred Hebrew Torah, written in the words given to Moses
by God on Mount Sinai. Another scroll contains a third of the Book of Psalms
which were inspired by the shepherd and musician King David's exile in this
desolate region. The controversial Dead Sea Scrolls were written 2000 years ago
at the beginning of modern Judaism and the birth of Christianity and were found
in 1947. They are considered to be one of the world's most important
archaological finds of the 20th century.
Dead Sea Scrolls
on display at their
permanent home,
the Shrine
of the Book
Israel Museum,
Jerusalem |
The scrolls, on parchment, leather and copper, were written by the
ultra-religious Essenes and found in 1947 in caves at Qumran high above the Dead
Sea in the Judaean Desert by a young shepherd searching for his goat. Many
thousands of fragments of other scrolls have been found at the site in
subsequent years.
Intense controversy has raged among scholars and ecclesiastics over the
decades as to the origin and meaning of the manuscripts. Dozens of film
documentaries have been made, a large number of books have been written, and
hundreds of articles about them have appeared in newspapers and magazines
throught the world.
Some Precepts of the Law is a scroll containing part of a letter in which
the community tries to convince the Jerusalem authorities of the correctness of
their religious standpoint. The Community Rule scroll details the strict
regulations which controlled membership. These rules formed a code of discipline
which were designed to keep numbers pure through worship, ritual bathing and
study in readiness for the final war against evil.
The controversial War Rule scroll foretells the final battle when the
forces of light will triumph over darkness and the true worship of God be
restored in Jerusualem. |
A large number of objects from Qumran vividly illustrate the simplicity of
the daily lives of the Essenes. Storage jars and linen wrappings how the care
with which they hid the scrolls in caves in the surrounding cliffs. A non-spill
inkwell used by scribes to hold the soot-based ink with which the leader scrolls
were so carefully written would have been familiar in schoolrooms until quite
recently.
It was the world of Ceasar which finally brought the Essenes community to
an end. In 68 CE the Roman Tenth Legion under the future Emperor Vespasian
destroyed Qumran and two years later the Jerusalem Temple itself.
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