Treasure Report In Dead Sea Scrolls “Tall Story”

Press, Volume XCIII, Issue 27992, 12 June 1956, Page 12

Treasure Report In Dead Sea Scrolls “Tall Story”

(New Zealand Press Association)

AUCKLAND, June 11. t Details of hiding places for 200 tons of gold and silver, recently extracted from two of the 2000-year-old Dead Sea scrolls by specialists in Manchester, might well have been a "tall story” invented by the Jewish sect known as Essenes, to draw the Roman invaders away from religious literary treasures, according to the Rev. A. Clifford, vice-principal of the Baptist Theological College. Mr Clifford, who undertook Old

Testament studies in Palestine, England and America last year, claims to be the only man in New Zealand who has actually seen the scrolls. When the news of the treasure details were published a week ago, he said, he did not know what to make of it, as the Essenes were a poor people, An alternative explanation was that the writers were following the usual practice of talking in parables; the “gold and silver” referred to actually being Scripture scrolls. “I would not advise you, on the strength of these two documents,” he said, “to go hunting for gold and silver in Palestine.”

Describing the tremendous task presented, after the discovery of the manuscripts in 1948, in unrolling and deciphering them, Mr Clifford compared it to getting sense out of a library of 300 books on a variety of subjects which had been put through a mincing machine, then handed over to an army of worms, and then partly charred. The specialists had to contend with a mighty jigsaw puzzle of 40.000 pieces, each varying in size from that of a hand to a piece of confetti. Every book of the Old Testament except Esther was represented and the text was remarkably close to the standard Hebrew Scriptures.