(+Video) Anything but Jewish? - The Dead Sea Scrolls

Petra Marquadt-Bigman..
The Warped Mirror..
19 December '12..

On Tuesday, the Israel Antiquities Authority and Google Israel launched the Dead Sea Scrolls digital library. As noted on the project page of Google’s Cultural Institute, the scrolls “offer critical insight into Jewish society in the Land of Israel during the Second Temple Period, the time of the birth of Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism;” the new Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library provides more detailed information on the historical background and relevance and rightly promises on its home page “an exceptional encounter with antiquity.”



While this fascinating project shares the Dead Sea Scrolls with the world, the news of the digital library’s launch reminded me that a few years ago, an exhibition of the scrolls in Canada illustrated once again that those who are always eager to deny the ancient Jewish connection to the land of Israel would not hesitate to come up with the most pathetic stories to claim the scrolls as their own heritage. What I wrote about this incident in early 2010 is no longer available online and therefore reposted below.

Anything but Jewish

Petra Marquardt-Bigman
The Warped Mirror
17 January '10

Examples of Arab disregard for historic Jewish sites and artifacts could easily fill a book, and it wouldn't be a problem to fill an additional volume with examples of Arab denials of the historic Jewish connection to Jerusalem and the region. In the most recent example, Jordanian authorities apparently felt no embarrassment at claiming the Dead Sea Scrolls are "our antiquities," and the Palestinians no qualms in asserting the scrolls are "part of Palestinian heritage."

In an apparent attempt to bolster these claims, Palestinian journalist Daoud Kuttab recently shared his memories of "Growing Up in Bethlehem With the Dead Sea Scrolls Story" with readers of The Huffington Post.

Kuttab professes to be particularly upset by Israeli claims that "the scrolls have no connection to Jordan or the Jordanian people" but are instead "an intrinsic part of Jewish heritage and religion." Kuttab seems to think that these Israeli claims are easily invalidated by his own childhood memories of being told the story about the discovery of the first Dead Sea Scrolls by a Beduin goat herder - who then asked an Arab cobbler to make sandals out of them. Fortunately, the cobbler realized that these scrolls could be valuable, and according to Kuttab, they eventually were passed on to a high-ranking official of the Syrian Orthodox Church, who managed to sell them for a fortune.

So much for the deeply-felt Arab attachment to this unique historic treasure.

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