Dead Sea Scrolls at San Diego Natural History Museum
This upcoming San Diego exhibit has now been attacked in a fascinating opinion piece by Norman Golb, a University of Chicago historian, published in The Forward. Golb is one of the world's leading Dead Sea Scrolls experts--the Cambridge History of Judaism features his views on scroll origins as one of their two articles on the topic. The link to the Forward piece is http://www.forward.com/articles/take-claims-about-dead-sea-scrolls-with-a-grain-of/
Unlike the exhibitors of the scrolls in Kansas City, the San Diego Natural History Museum curators have decided to exclude any representation of the ideas of the growing number of opponents of the old, Qumran-sectarian theory of scroll origins (see the Forward article for details).
This policy of bias and exclusion is bound to raise questions concerning the proper role of museums in an open, pluralistic society that attaches value to inter-faith exchanges. The American Association of Museums has promulgated standards that prominently include "ethical transparency" in the preparation of exhibits. Rather than adhering to that standard, the San Diego Natural History Museum appears to have taken sides in an academic struggle, for motives that remain a mystery. The result is that the contested ideas of the group of scholars who monopolized access the scrolls for many years, are now being presented to the public as the accepted truth.
By contrast, a news item on Golb's recent Kansas City lecture quotes the curator there as stating that Golb "may represent a view of what happened that the orthodox archaeologists don't agree with, but his ideas need to be discussed... If you are trying to decide on a theory, you need as many data points as possible," etc. See see http://www.kcjc.com/articles/2007/04/27/news/a.kcjc.news.golb.dead.sea.scrolls.txt
Golb now has a new article
Golb now has a new article out, entitled "Fact and Fiction in Current Exhibitions of Dead Sea Scrolls: A Critical Notebook for Viewers." It goes through a list of all kinds of serious errors contained in the wall plaques of all the current Dead Sea Scroll exhibits, and deals specifically with the San Diego exhibit in an appendix. The link is http://www.oi.uchicago.edu/pdf/dss_fact_fiction_2007.pdf
Beyond the erroneous and misleading content of the San Diego exhibit, however, a fundamental question must be raised. On Jan. 9, 2007, writing on the San Diego Jewish World website, Dr. Risa Levitt Kohn stated:
"Of the museums hosting the scrolls, [San Diego Natural History Museum] 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." (See http://www.jewishsightseeing.com/letters_to_editor/2007-0-1-09-dead%20sea%20challenge.htm)
Dr. Kohn's statement that she is a "Dead Sea Scrolls" scholar was immediately challenged by commentators on several internet blogs, who pointed out that she has apparently never published anything on this topic. Then, interviewed by the Voice of San Diego on June 2, 2007, Dr. Kohn stated 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." (See http://www.voiceofsandiego.org/articles/2007/06/02/news/01kohn060207.txt)
What is more, Dr. Kohn's additional statements in the Voice interview contain a number of egregious errors which 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 book dealing with the Hebrew Bible (specifically, Ezekiel), but she apparently lacks knowledge of the ensuing period.
The contradiction between Dr. Kohn's two statements, that she is a "Dead Sea Scrolls scholar" and that she is "far from an expert," is flagrant. This obliges one to ask whether she obtained her position as curator on the basis of the false representation that she was indeed a scholar in the field. 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 -- one funded by over six million dollars of grants received from various donors including the CEO of Qualcomm.
P.s. I wish to point out
P.s. I wish to point out that my assertion that Dr. Kohn "lacks knowledge" of intertestamentary Judaism should be qualified to the extent that she undoubtedly has some degree of knowledge of this field, but apparently lacks the kind of professional knowledge of it that one would have expected from a curator hired to handle a six-million-dollar exhibit on a topic of this importance.
It should also be pointed out the Los Angeles Times recently carried an interesting report on this exhibit, by Mike Boehm. They asked Dr. Kohn why the museum has carefully excluded all scholars who oppose the old, and increasingly contested, theory of Scroll origins from the lecture series accompanying the exhibit, and she came up with a good reply--"You don't want to confuse people with so many competing theories, so they walk away, saying, 'Well, nobody really knows anything!'"
I must agree with other commentators that this response is extremely convincing. The last thing in the world we would want is for people to understand WHY there is more than one interpretation of the facts. After all, that would only confuse them, and in their confused state they might become depressed, or behave in an irrational manner. They might even start asking WHY the museum has not explained HOW it came about that an entire series of major scholars rejected the old theory over the past decade, not in favor of "so many competing theories," but in favor of one salient competing theory. Yes, we must protect people from the truth at all costs.