The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception

• Author : Michael;Leigh, Richard Baigent
• Binding : Paperback
• EAN : 9780671797973
• ISBN : 0671797972
• Label : Touchstone Books
• Manufacturer : Touchstone Books
• Number Of Pages : 288
• Package Dimensions : 0.90 inches (Height) x 9.10 inches (Length) x 0.80 pounds (Weight) x 6.10 inches (Width)
• Publication Date : 1993
• Publisher : Touchstone Books
• Studio : Touchstone Books

Customer Reviews:

Customers rated The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception 3.5 stars out of 5.0 based on 28 reviews:

• Not a bad read - but not exactly what I'd call "Sensational" material . . .

  by Alpha-Beta (Victoria, BC, Canada) - 2007-12-15  
  Overall, this is an okay book. I actually found some of it (or maybe it's ideas) a little funny. Like Michael Baigent's book "The Holy Blood & The Holy Grail", this book sounds like it has some shocking secret to reveal. Obviously, it is popular to attack Christianity and more specifically Catholicism . . . but this book falls short of the mark when it comes to actually giving any concrete examples of how the Dead Sea Scrolls actually "Threaten the church." Yes, it is frustrating that there was such a delay in the publication of some of the scrolls (something which has been radically changed in the last 20 years or so). The scrolls themselves however, don't actually offer any threat to Judaism or Christianity. If anything, these traditions are in fact strengthened by the discovery of the scrolls. Considering none of the authors are actually Dead Sea Scroll scholars, you have to take the book for what it is - a "popular" work. This means it is designed to spoon feed "research" to people who otherwise may never even pick up a real book on the Dead Sea Scrolls, Christianity, or almost anything else to do with history. I enjoyed the book - but like "Holy Blood & Holy Grail" and Henry Lincoln's "A Holy Place" (which I also enjoyed), I am still waiting for the "shocking discoveries" advertised on the covers. Anyone actually interested in The Dead Sea Scroll would do well to check out what the scrolls actually say. Read any of the "Discoveries In The Judaean Desert" series, or anything by Geza Vermes, James Charlesworth, et cetera. There are even some EXCELLENT DVD lectures available from www.biblicalarchaelogy.org. Do your own research, let the scrolls (and the Bible) speak for themselves, and cultivate an informed opinion.

• Keep Digging Michael!

  by Shayna Miller (Ontario, Canada) - 2006-12-01  
  Thank God there are people daring enough to take on the Catholic church, and the power and lies and cover ups that he, and his colleagues have uncovered. This book made me so angry. Keep asking the un-askable questions! The truth will eventually come out. Best read ever

• A little dry, but good

  by - 2005-04-26  
  A friend lent me this book a few years back and I began to read it. The first half of the book deals with the politics of the church and the world at large that were in place at the time of the Qumran discoveries. It also deals a lot with the histories of the individual reasearchers on the Qumran team. I found it very dry and put the book away for "greener pastures". I stumbled upon it a few months ago, (still on my bookshelf) and, still being interested in the subject picked it up again. I managed to wade through the first half of it and once it actually began talking about the scrolls themselves, and what they reveal to us, the book became much more interesting. Unfortunately though, you *do* need to read the first half to understand a lot of what references in the last half. It took a while, but it was definitely worth it in the end. Whether you believe it or not, definitely an interesting perspective of the history of Christianity and the history of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

• The battle for the scrolls...

  by FrKurt Messick (Bloomington, IN USA) - 2004-06-25  
  This book, written in the early 1990s, had much more punch when it was first written. The Dead Sea Scrolls were still essentially under lock-and-key, accessible as a whole only to a few selected scholars who were selected by unclear and seemingly biased methods - that bias often being misconstrued as the dictates of the Roman Catholic Church. History has proven something rather different going on, but reading this book is still a good study of what can happen in even the most banal and esoteric of endeavours when secrecy and restricted access to information is the norm.The Dead Sea Scrolls is a name given to a general collection of scrolls found in the area of Qumran, in the desert near the Dead Sea in the West Bank of the Jordan River. The first scrolls from this region were found in 1947/48. Many more scrolls have been found since then (and there may be some still missing, or hidden, by various regional authorities and antiquities dealers and collectors), including some in areas as far away as the British Museum (manuscripts collected from a Cairo genizah 50 years earlier were later found to match the scrolls). Part of the politics of around the scrolls, which always featured into their saga, was that, while they were primary early Jewish texts (the Hebrew Bible, additional psalms, community writings of early sects of Judaism, etc.), the scrolls were found in what was then Arab territory by Arab traders and bedouins. The fragile state of Israeli/Palestinian/Jordanian politics always factored into the scrolls' fate; the scrolls came under control first of the Orthodox (Christian) leaders in East Jerusalem (then in Arab control), then later as scholars were sought under general Western academic supervision. It just so happened that many of the noted scholars in ancient Hebrew manuscripts (apart from Jewish scholars, who were prevented from participating) came from the ranks of the churches and seminaries, particularly the Roman Catholic Church. This is where the seeds of mistrust and division were sown. For decades, the scrolls had to be reconstructed, as many of them were in fragmentary condition. Like a giant jigsaw puzzle with pieces missing, the pieces had to be reassembled as best they could be. This takes much longer than one might think - in the pre-computer days, without electronic assistance for cataloguing and matching, things had to be done manually, with cards, files, and photographs. It is true that many of the larger, in-tact scrolls were published early. But as time dragged on, it seemed somewhat as if there was a deliberate with-holding of information.Baigent and Leigh trace the history of the scrolls and the history of the ideas of deception and restriction around the scrolls. Unfortunately, the issues are a bit overblown at times, to make the book more sensational. The feeling of 'they're hiding something' was certainly very real, and scholars, church leaders and the general public were clamouring for more access to the scrolls, if only to prove that there was not something vastly damaging to the church being hidden. Ideas were floated wildly speculating that there were writings that showed Jesus was never crucified, or somehow didn't die, that he had children and they continued a 'royal' line (it doesn't hurt to remember here that Baigent and Leigh co-authored the book, 'Holy Blood, Holy Grail', that attempted to trace the origins of the legends of the Holy Grail to the descendents of Jesus and his family). The idea was also given that the Roman Catholic scholars, at the instruction of the Vatican, were suppressing these damaging writings. This of course leaves aside the fact that there were non-catholics as part of the International Team, but that became problematic in and of itself, as the one avowed atheist, John Allegro, published scroll findings for which his published later had to issue retractions and apologies.After the 1967 war, Jewish scholars gained access on a more equal footing with the European (mostly Christian) academics, but the general access was still restricted. Conspiracy theories grew.Alas, history is sometimes far more mundane than one might hope - it wasn't vast conspiracies of keeping damaging texts hidden that was driving the restricted access, but largely academic politics and careerism of a rather common stamp (despite the fact that they were working with world-famous materials). When it became apparent that particular scholars (who were, along the way, assigned and given 'authority' over particular sub-sets of the scrolls) were keeping access so as to have first publication rights, and were treating these assignments as personal goods to be passed along to successors of their own choosing, this is when things really came to a head.Complete copies of the scrolls had been made and deposited in other places around the world (given the general insecurity of the Middle East, which meant that a war could destroy them quite easily), but stringent security measures gu ...

• An interesting tale, well-written

  by Rabbi Yonassan Gershom (Minnesota, USA) - 2002-04-22  
  Whether or not there was an actual conspiracy to cover up the content of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the fact is that there were no Jews on the Scroll committee for decades, and Jewish scholars were repeatedly denied access. That in itself is inexcusable, given that the Scrolls are, after all, ancient Jewish documents. It would be as if original manuscripts of the Gospels were discovered, but no Christian scholars were allowed to see them. Absolutely inexcusable! Baigent and Leigh cover this story very well in this book. Those who doubt that there was blatant antisemitism on the original Scroll committee can also read Strugnell's infamous interview with Ha-Aretz in the Hershel Shank's anthology, "Understanding the Dead Sea Scrolls." As a Jew, I find it supremely offensive that people with such anti-Jewish attitudes were the ones to have control of the Scrolls.Now that the texts of the Scrolls have finally been published for all to read, "The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception" may seem a bit dated and its conclusions anticlimatic. Still, it does raise a lot of good questions about some of the basic assumptions that the general public holds concerning the nature of the ancient Jewish community that lived at Qumran -- a debate which, I'm sure, will continue for generations to come.

Your Opinion Counts: