Judaism before Josephus
Posted by Kushana Torumekia at 10/2/2008 12:21 AM 
Categories: Students, Judaism, Academia, Archaeology, Languages
Categories: Students, Judaism, Academia, Archaeology, Languages
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A sketch:You are a student: an advanced student, but a student. You have a wonderful student's job in an ancient, far away land. Antiquities - real, smuggled, and forged - are common and there is poverty and war, giving people incentive to sell hastily whatever they find.
A native comes to your door out of the desert. There is an unsurmountable language barrier. He wants you to examine bits of an old book, dark with age, wrinkled. He has already shown it to the most learned village men he knows. None of them know what it is or how old it is. It isn't anything to him: it's not from his people's religion, but he would like to know if it's worth some money. He will likely try an antiquities dealer, next — where the fragile paper may be cut up, handled roughly, smuggled out of the country.
It is evening. Your boss has gone home. In fact no one on the museum's staff are there at all, only another student. Your boss is a busy and important man and does not like to be troubled by frivolous questions. There is no way for you to ask anyone about this — and if you're wrong the whole staff and your professors back home will call you an idiot.
The man at your door has come a long way: if you ask him to come back tomorrow in too bland a tone he may not return at all.
Is his book old? Paper can be darkened, ancient languages can be learned, old handwriting styles can be copied nearly exactly by practiced forgers — and the man on your doorstep may be only an unwitting middleman. The pages look old, smell old, the handwriting is a lot like the already-known book you've been working with, the oldest example of any book in this very language ....
How do you answer? Do you get across that yes, your boss would be very interested in seeing this book, bring it back first thing tomorrow and do not stop at any dealer's shops? Do you indicate your boss might be interested in this, it could be kinda old or an interesting curio? Do you send the man away, not sure and afraid you'll be teased the rest of your career for mistaking some modern forgery or a common, recent item for the real thing?
Most scholars scurry back to their books when asked a question, and they should. It is the first rule of thumb when one of the cable documentary makers or public radio calls: ask them what they want, hang up (pleading some brief interruption), and brush up on the topic (even if you think you know the subject.) My first Latin teacher taught me that I had to memorize Latin words and grammar or I'd forever be hobbling with a crutch and never able to move through the language fluently.
However, real learning is what you can do with no books to help you. (Although knowing where to look things up is a very important supplement.)
My field now covers a broad range of topics and no human being can hold all of them in their head at once. We are no longer in an era where all the essential ancient texts one had to master could fit in a small bag, could be carried around (on the necessary boat trip or while traveling in the Near East), could always be studied, compared and consulted — and were in one language, which one started learning well before college. (Although a well-rounded scholar would know three (the first of which would also be learned as a schoolboy) — and perhaps many more.) The essential texts of my field now cover four or five languages, and reasonable arguments could be made for raising that number to eight or nine. The books they fill would fit a library shelf, at minimum, and would be too large and heavy to carry in anything but a hard-sided suitcase. (Good arguments could be made for expanding that to two institutional-sized book shelves, if not more.) This does not count the explosion of other relevant ancient texts, modern archaeological publications, art and history reference books, and language dictionaries necessary to understand that basic collection of books.
By the way, the fragmentary book the native man was showing you was the first fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls. By telling him your boss would be very interested in examining them, first thing, you have opened the door for the identification, collection, preservation, and translation of both the oldest copies of the books of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) and other priceless illuminations on the Judaisms that came before Jesus.
Congratulations, your willingness to be wrong (and to be called an idiot) has changed the course of history. You will be remembered forever by other students as they struggle over their Pe'al verbs and the difference between Hasmonean and Herodian scribes' handwriting.
(Final note: the man on your doorstep is not to be faulted: he is no worse than anyone on Antiques Roadshow — although a great deal poorer.)
-Kushana
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