FINAL WARNING: Setting the Stage for Destruction
from being connected with Christianity and Judaism, and concentrated
only on the Biblical literature. In 1956, tired of de Vaux’s attempts to
prevent the Scrolls from being linked to Christianity, John Allegro was
a guest on a series of three radio shows in northern England. The third
interview resulted in a New York Times article which said: “The origins
of some Christian ritual and doctrines can be seen in the documents of
an extremist Jewish sect that existed for more than 100 years before
the birth of Jesus Christ. This is the interpretation placed on the
‘fabulous’ collection of Dead Sea Scrolls by one of an international
team of seven scholars ... John Allegro ... (who) said last night in a
broadcast that the historical basis of the Lord’s Supper and part at
least of the Lord’s prayer and the New Testament teaching of Jesus
were attributable to the Qumranians.”In 1987, he quit, calling the team’s delays “inexcusable,” saying that
for years they had been “sitting on material which is not only of
outstanding importance, but also quite the most religiously sensitive.”
He died in 1988.Robert Eisenman, a former Research Fellow at the Albright Institute,
who was a Professor of Middle East Religions and Chairman of
Religious Studies at California State University at Long Beach, was
denied access to photographs of the Scroll fragments by Strugnell. In
1989, he said publicly, that during the last 40 years, all of the research
on the Dead Sea Scrolls was controlled by a handful of scholars who
had revealed only a small portion. He called for access to the Scrolls
by qualified scholars, and for AMS (Accelerator Mass Spectroscopy)
Carbon-14 dating to be performed on the documents to verify the
dating, which up to that point had been relying on the original,
obsolete form of dating, which had been done shortly after their
discovery.In April, 1989, the Israeli Archaeological Council created a Scroll
Oversight Committee to oversee the publication of all Qumran texts,
and to make sure the international team completed their assignments,
and in July, 1989, Amir Drori, Director of the Israeli Department of
Antiquities, a member of that Committee, told the Los Angeles Times,
that “if someone does not complete his work on time we have the right
to deliver the scrolls to someone else.”