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Show The Daily Herald Saturday, October 19, 1996 Chinese Dead Sea take both Scrolls good, bad nearing from West publication Bess and I recently attended a reunion of the people who had gone to China to teach in the program administered by the Kennedy Center for International Studies at Brigham Young University. We enjoyed and were stirred by the fellowship and by By SHEILA SANCHEZ The Daily Herald Publication of the Dead Sea Scrolls is getting nearer, according to the director Dead Sea of the Jerusalem-base- d Scrolls Foundation who is in Provo this week to again meet with members and leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-da- y Saints who are helping to finance the project. "I'm here to meet with people who are interested in the Dead Sea Scrolls and who have already given support or who may give support in the future," said Weston W. Fields, a scholar of ancient biblical Hebrew who has been involved in the ancient documents for about 10 years. 2.000-year-o- high-profi- MardEn J. Vf 2Jh Matter Unorganized reports from recent returnees. But what really stirred us was a report by Jove Bennion, who, with her husband George, has spent most of the last six years teaching in China. Joye told us that the Chinese government has w ithdrawn much of its support for education, especially for the elementary grades. Education is still required, but the students or their families must pay for it. The real sufferers from this change are the poor peasant children of the countryside. Very few have parents who can afford even the meager schooling for the child to achieve literacy. The only real hope for many of them is through a grass-root- s organization, the "Hope" project, aimed only at literacy for the kids. Joye and George found that even a minimum contribution of $36 would give a child 5 years of schooling and literacy. Joye (a fitting name) describes ecstatically going out into the country and meeting the individual students she and George were sponsoring. Whatever we think of the centralized control of such things, it has at least promoted widespread literacy. But this will inevitably change if those kids can't get that minimum education to give them literacy. The sad contrast that all of us felt between the kindness, goodness, concern and love from the students and people, and the power, wealth, and arbitrary control shown by communist leaders and businessmen well, it will inevitably deepen and become ' worse, just as it has been doing in America. One of our saddest observations in China was the way the people were picking up, mostly by TV. the worst of America n smoking everywhere even by y hotels and kids, tourist gimmicks, the obsession with getting and spending but all too little of whatever is good here, including the freedoms we prize. A contrasting observation ties to something baic to the Chinese nature. I've mentioned their kindness, goodness, concern and love lor us. Joye told me about another quality, exemplified by two old Chinese women who both had their feet bound as they were grow ing up. They struggle just to walk. Yet she describes them as "radiantly happy." with an air of "total tranquility." Such goodness and happiness in spite of what well, they have lived through it makes me ashamed of letting so many little things bother me. And ashamed that so few of us can feel or show that happiness and tranquility. We hardly think of China w ithout praying that the country will open itself to Christianity. But when 1 think of how far we in our Christian nation are from that happiness and tranquility, I can't help wondering what effect widespread Christianity would have on the people. Would they take from it, as they have from so much else of America, our worst and ignore our best? We feel deeply the problem. But we dream of real change in their official policy and then wide acceptance. We can only hope and pray that somehow religion, something deeper than the communism many of our students call religion, will be able to deepen that joy and spread it ever wider. Maiden Clark is a retired professor of English at Brigham 3-- I ld le Contributors to date include Orem residents Alan and Karen Ashton; Steven and Kalleen Lund, executive vice president at Nu Skin; and members of the Provo-base- d Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS). Almost two years ago, Fields also met with President James E. Faust, second counselor in the First Presidency of the LDS Church and LDS Apostle Jeffrey R. Holland. They both expressed an interest in the publication of the biblical documents. A brief history The scrolls were discovered in caves along the western shore of the Dead Sea from 1947 to 1956. The most famous caves are the 1 near Qumran, where some scholars say an Essenes community lived. The Essenes was a Jewish sect known to have existed elsewhere in Israel during the Second Temple period, which would make them contemporaries of 1 Daily Herald PhotoMatthew R. Smith Weston W. Fields, director of the Dead Sea Scrolls Foundation, displays photos of the scrolls at the Provo Park Hotel Thursday Jesus Christ. The scrolls comprise about 800 documents. Some are complete or nearly complete scrolls, but most are fragmentary. About 100.000 fragments have been found. The ancient records were written on parchment made from goat, sheep and gazelle skins, trimmed and sewn together to make long sheets, two of which stretch to approximately 30 feet in length. They were written Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek. Field's foundation is publishing the scrolls under the editorship of Professor Emanuel Tov of Hebrew in University, Jerusalem. They are being published by Oxford University during a visit to Provo. Fields was in Provo this week to drum up support for the work of translating the remaining portions of the Press in a set that will have at least 38 volumes and which will be titled. "Discoveries in the Judean Desert." The foundation is the only organization in the world financially supporting about 65 biblical scholars and linguists preparing the scrolls for publication. The publication of the scrolls began in 1960 but languished because of insufficient funds to help scholars working with limited resources. Between 1960 and 1992, nine volumes of scrolls were produced. Their reconstruction, translation and interpretation has been controversial. The San Marino (Cr'.if.) Huntington Library in 1991 defied the pre-tee- ultra-fanc- v ATI Jf scrolls for publication. Fields says that with adequate funding, the entire collection of scrolls could be published within 10 years. monopoly of a small group of scholars appointed by the Israel Antiquities Authority since 1967 to control the scrolls. It published 3,000 photographs of the fragments so other scholars may now study them. Foundation work Fields explained the foundation was formed 1991 to raise money to publish and study the rest of the manuscripts. The cost of producing a single volume is approximately $100,000. Ashton is helping by sponsoring the publication of at least three volumes. The foundation supports the scholars and linguists with funds it receives from a variety of sources, such as the Rothschild Foundation in Israel; the Catholic Biblical Association in Washington, D.C.; two Southern Baptist seminaries; the Edith C. Blum Foundation and the Dorot Foundation in New York; the Royal Academy of Arts and Letters in Sweden; the Royal Academy of Sciences in Norway; and the University of Copenhagen in Denmark. The foundation has three Utahns on its board of advisors: Grant L. Cannon, president and Chief Executive Officer of West Corp. Inc., in Salt Lake City; Truman G. Madsen, Brigham Young University professor of philosophy and former director of the school's Jerusalem Center; and Francis A. Madsen Jr., a private Salt Lake City investor. Ashton serves on the foundation's board of directors. The scrolls contain the oldest copies of the Hebrew Bible, also known as the Old Testament. Every book from the Old Testament except Esther is represented. They also contain parts of the "Apocrypha," or 15 additional books found in some versions of the Old Testament. The Vulgate, or Latin Bible, used by the Roman Catholic Church from the time of Jerome (fourth century) contains these books, as also does the Septuagint, or Greek Oid Testament (third century B.C.) The scrolls also contain literature known as "Pseudepigrapha," or writings of a later time, but which the author attributed to someone earlier, like the Book of Enoch written between 300 B.C. or 400 B.C. Enoch lived thousands of years before that time. The documents also contain "sectarian literature," written for the people of the time and Jewish literature that wasn't known before. Publication of 16 volumes of scrolls have been published. Eight of the 16 have been published through the help of the A total i Dead Sea Scrolls Foundation. The other eight were published between I960 and 1991. It's expected that the last 22 volumes will be completed within the next 0 years with the help of the foundation. Volumes one through 10, 12 through 15, and volume 19 have already been published. Volume 11, which includes three compositions in poetry by the Essenes and containing their 1 Photo courtesy of Bruce and Kenneth ZuckermanWest Semitic Research photograph of the oldest known fragments of the Book of Genesis, which have been dated to approximately 150 B.C., appears at top. Time and the elements have adversely affected the scroll fragments, almost to the point of illegibility. Mod ern technology, however, can lend a hand in A assisting scroll scholars with their translation work. In the other photograph, the same scroll fragments are seen after they have been phofilm; the film allows the tographed with infra-red text to be read easier. Such work is labor intensive and costly. weekly worship liturgy for the religious year, should be published this year. The volume aiso reveals more fully the Essenes' of the link, understanding between heavenly and earthly worship and the interaction of men and angels in the praise and service of God, Fields said. The most recent volume published is number 15, Fields said. It is titled, "Biblical Texts: The Prophets." Of all prophetic most books, Isaiah figures prominently at Qumran, with portions of 17 individual copies discovered in Cave Four. As with all the biblical manuscripts, they were copied about 1,000 years earlier than the oldest manuscripts known before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, Fields said. Volume 16 will be published at the end of 1997, Fields said. It contains portions of all the biblical books recovered from Qumran, except Esther and Nehemiah. The volume will contain text editions of the latest books from the Hebrew and the Bible, Hagiographa, or Holy Writings, which include the following books: Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Song of Solomon, Ecclesiastes, Lamentations and Daniel. The biblical expert explained that of all the writings, the Book of Psalms is the most common at Qumran, with portions of 20 individual copies discovered in Cave Four alone. 'These manuscripts provide important evidence of the transmission of the Bible, the development of different text types, and the principles of translation technique," he said. Volume 17, titled, "Biblical Text: Samuel." is being edited by Young Brigham University Hebrew professor Donald W. Parry and Harvard University Semitic languages professor Frank M. Cross. Fields said the scroll is one of the finest biblical manuscripts from Qumran and contains parts of Samuel which have been well preserved in more than 30 columns of text. Volume 18, titled, 'The Damascus Document." will also be released this autumn. Fields said it is a composition compiled by the Qumran sect, which relates its history and provides significant clues to the date of its inception. It summarizes the laws of the community, particularly those regarding observance of the Sabbath. Volume 22, titled, "Parabibli-ca- l Texts, Part 3," will be published this winter and contains a collection of Jewish works composed during the intertestamental period (years between the completion of Old Testament and beginning of New Testament about 300 years) linked to the biblical text through characters, themes or genre. The writings further enhance the understanding of the Second Temple period in Judaism and its use of the Bible, Fields said. The first nine scroll volumes produced in the 1960s will also be included in the final collection, with their translation from French to English. 1 Young University. POOR |