By Charles Gadda, New York

This is 100% an issue about money and selling tickets to a blockbuster-type art show. This is supposed to be the Museum of Man's "cash cow" for the year, and they have projected income on their general operating budget based on expected ticket sales to the "Dead Sea Scrolls" exhibit. If the mythology of the scrolls was stripped from the exhibit by less intriguing theories about their existence, then ticket sales would slump. That the Museum of Man" is marketing this exhibit under false pretenses to make a buck is not surprising -- many businesses do false advertising. But the museum is a non-profit, public benefit corporation with a board of directors who should immediately investigate this matter as is their job overseeing the organization and making sure it is true to its mission and operating in a prudent fiscal manner.

Posted by Christopher Hall | reply to this comment
July 5, 2007 10:04 pm

Christopher Hall is obviously right. I will post twice to cover several points. (1) The directors are aware of what is going on, as the museum's public relations department has already begun to make offensive statements about "someone named Norm Golb." They have simply decided to take no action on the matter, no doubt because they are hoping it will go away. (2) Fabrication of a "consensus": The Qumran-sectarian clique (the associates of the infamous scroll monopolists) keeps holding widely publicized "international conferences" from which all of their opponents are automatically excluded. On the basis of these conferences, they then make unverifiable statements about a "consensus" about scroll origins; in its turn, the "consensus" is then used to justify the exclusion of the same opponents from the Natural History Museum's six-million-dollar "educational experience."

Posted by Robert Dworkin | reply to this comment
July 6, 2007 4:35 am

My other comment, on the history of the exhibit. (1) The curator, Dr. Kohn, was a student of David Freeman, a traditional Qumranologist who wrote a joint Ph.D. dissertation with another well-known defender of the Qumran-sectarian theory, Frank Cross (the dissertation, co-authored by the two of them, was accepted by Harvard and they were both awarded degrees--I am aware of no other example of this ever having been done in any humanities department). (2) Kohn and Freeman met with Weston Fields, an amateur archaeology fan who does not have a doctorate but directs an entity called The Dead Sea Scrolls Foundation, whose sole aim is apparently to defend, popularize and profit from the old, Qumran-sectarian theory of scroll origins. (3) Kohn and Fields pitched the exhibit to the musuem. The museum agreed, obviously for financial motives, and without any regard for the academic context. The results are clear...

Posted by Robert Dworkin | reply to this comment
July 6, 2007 5:14 am

OOPS -- getting the museums mixed up -- sorry but the brands are just so indistinguishable! I am sorry that the Museum of Man was referred to in place of the SD Natural History Museum.

Posted by Christopher Hall | reply to this comment
July 6, 2007 5:32 am

From the looks of it, people don't seem to be very interested in the scrolls ...for whatever reason. The museum couldn't even get a full house for the grand opening. Looks and sounds really boring to me. I hope the taxpayers don't have to foot the bill when the show is a flop!

Posted by Ticket Sales | reply to this comment
July 6, 2007 6:25 am

I appreciate your comments; however, did Mr. Hall pause to consider that if the museum's board of directors were to pursue the action he apparently contemplates, then the public could end up being confused, and that this exhibit could end up becoming an embarrassment for the academic clique represented by Dr. Kohn? Since neither of those results would be desirable in a system of ordered liberty such as ours, Mr. Hall's suggestion can only strike an intelligent reader as alarmingly ill-conceived.

Posted by Charles Gadda | reply to this comment
July 6, 2007 12:34 pm

P.s. Forgive me if I spoke harshly; I certainly did not mean to impugn Mr. Hall's intelligence. Nonetheless, I find it puzzling that a man of his integrity should suggest that the authorities in charge of a museum in an open society such as ours actually ought to take steps that might lead the public to become confused. This, it seems to me, is precisely what must be avoided at all costs.

Posted by Charles Gadda | reply to this comment
July 8, 2007 11:59 am

Comparing the various linked items, I see that on Jan. 9, Dr. Kohn stated: "Of the museums hosting the scrolls, SDNHM is the only museum that has its own curator for the exhibition. As a Dead Sea Scrolls scholar and professor of religious studies at SDSU, I am fortunate to have been selected for that position." Then, interviewed by the Voice of San Diego on June 2, she confessed that she was "far from an expert" and that she "didn't really study Dead Sea Scrolls much, other than in kind of a tangential way." The contradiction between the statements is flagrant. This obliges one to ask whether Dr. Kohn was hired as the curator on the basis of the false representation that she was a Dead Sea Scrolls scholar. If she did not make such a representation, then one must also ask whether it was appropriate for the museum to hire someone without the requisite expertise to curate such an important exhibition.

Posted by niki w | reply to this comment
July 9, 2007 3:58 am

It should also be pointed out that Dr. Kohn's other statements in the Voice interview contain a number of quite stunning errors that reveal her ignorance in this domain. For example, she asserts that the scrolls are not really "Jewish" texts, because they predate the rabbinical period. This assertion reveals that Dr. Kohn is unfamiliar with the standard term "intertestamentary Judaism," commonly used to describe the religious practices and beliefs of the Jews of Palestine in the period between the composition of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. Dr. Kohn has indeed published a work dealing with the Hebrew Bible (specifically, the book of Ezekiel), but she apparently lacks knowledge of the ensuing period.

Posted by niki w | reply to this comment
July 9, 2007 3:58 am

Niki W: These points are well worth making. Nonetheless, in the interests of fairness, it should be stated that there is no reason to believe that Dr. Kohn is utterly lacking in knowledge of the intertestamentary period--she simply lacks the kind of professional knowledge of the field that ought to be expected from the curator of a six-million-dollar exhibit. The result is an impossible situation, because to take action to remedy the situation would merely confuse the public.

Posted by Charles Gadda | reply to this comment
July 9, 2007 6:10 am

I'm a fan of the Dead sea scrolls and the stories that surround it. I have Dr. Golb's book. "Who Wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls" and I highly recommend it. Thank you for posting the notebook. I went to see the scrolls in Seattle, twice. It was one of the most exciting things we've ever had here. I loved it despite the blatant misrepresentation of the facts. I simply ignored the plaques. I don't know why the organizers were remiss in their duties to inform, my theory is that they were just lazy and maybe they found the alternate version confusing because they didn't really pay attention to it but rather read the cliff notes. At any rate, I'm very grateful to have been able to look on those pages with my own eyes and I will never forget it.

Posted by Tuesday Kuykendall | reply to this comment
July 9, 2007 12:53 pm

- Years ago (late 1980's) I read in the Biblical Archeology Review (BAR) about the Dead Sea Scrolls finally being released so that people other than a select few could study them. I was thrilled with the idea. - - Now years later I've found that the select few still have control over what is said at showings of the scrolls. - - Makes me wonder if the select few are afraid that book sales of outdated material will drop a bit if word gets out that their ideas in the beginning were a bit flawed. - - I've stated before concerning this that the Museum could rake in the dough if they allowed debate and dissent. - - Set up some debates with two tables of pies in the center. - - This would attract both the intelligentsia and the unwashed masses.

Posted by prying1 | reply to this comment
July 10, 2007 11:52 am

The comment by "Tuesday Kuykendall" is revelatory: these Dead Sea Scrolls shows are not intended to "educate" people, they are fundamentally religious celebrations, just like a Bible movie or a Jesus "documentary." As long as people enjoy what they see or are "moved" by it, the museum will simply ignore questions of historical accuracy, neutrality, or any other scientific issue that might arise. It's profitable for their organization, therefore they would only change something if people actually started, say, to picket the exhibit or shout out in anger during the lecture series, which is obviously not going to happen.

Posted by Larry Schiffman | reply to this comment
July 11, 2007 3:29 am

What Mr. Schiffman (I assume there is no connection with the famous Leonard Schiffman, featured along with other traditionial Scrolls scholars in the museum's lecture series) says is no doubt true--he points to a further reason for protecting people from the truth, for how could people fully benefit from a religious experience and be educated at the same time?

Posted by Charles Gadda | reply to this comment
July 12, 2007 1:59 am

P.s. I have not yet responded to Mr. Dworkin, whose comment contains a small, no doubt inadvertent, error: Cross and Freeman did their "joint dissertation" at Johns Hopkins, not Harvard. Hopkins produced a lot of these brilliant scholars (including, incidentally, Golb); but they took widely different paths after receiving their degrees. On the path taken by Cross, see Golb's article entitled "The Qumran-Essene Theory and Recent Strategies Employed in its Defense." The link is link

Posted by Charles Gadda | reply to this comment
July 12, 2007 2:17 am

The above Charles Gadda has now exposed the Christian fundamentalist background of several individuals involved in planning and creating the content of the exhibit -- a fact carefully hidden from the public in the museum's press campaign. This gives rise to a basic question: did any of the persons in question have anything to do with the decision to exclude all of the opponents of the Qumran-Essene theory from the museum's lecture series? See link

Posted by Tanya Fischer | reply to this comment
August 11, 2007 7:49 am

Thanks for linking my article on Christian fundamentalist involvement in the Scrolls exhibit. However, the link to the article has changed, it is now link As for your question, the answer is "yes." What we appear to be dealing with here is an unethical, quid pro quo agreement to bring the scrolls to San Diego under the condition that the Jewish and Israeli scholars in question be sidelined from the exhibit. The museum agreed to this arrangement because its primary concern was not to "educate the public," but rather to make a buck. Does this kind of thing happen a lot? Yes. Should people be indignant about it? Yes. Will anything be done about it? Probably not.

Posted by Charles Gadda | reply to this comment
August 25, 2007 1:28 pm

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