Letters to the Editor
The Dead Sea Scrolls John Allegro The Casement Diaries .Rene MacColl, Peter Singleton-Gates `Women in Antiquity' The Ven. A. Earle
Political Philosophy J. N. W. Watkins
A Poet of the Counter-Reformation Fr. John Coventry, Rose Macaulay, Rev. Harold Drown
Dylan Thomas's Letters Stuart Thomas and others `The Reluctant Legionnaire' Michael Alexander
THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS
SIR,-1 hesitate to break into the interesting argument which appears to be developing in your columns concerning the historical back- ground of Jesus of Nazareth, but since my name is constantly recurring I feel I should clarify one issue on which neither protagonist seems very sure. I refer to a statement which was made under my name in a popular Ameri- Can weekly on February 6, and which has been freely quoted since, not least by my colleagues in Jerusalem, without anybody apparently taking the trouble to confirm its accuracy or its context. I refer to the now famous, or in- famous, 'pattern' statement.
In a misguided effort to educate a journalist into the significance of these scrolls for Chris- tian origins, 1 told him that 'there was a well- defined messianic pattern into which Jesus of isizareth fits,' I was referring to the re- markable correspondences we find in Qumran literature between the nature of the expected Davidic Messiah and the Church's description of Jesus, as fulfilling ancient hopes and prophecy. Thus both are scions of the House of David, both are 'begotten' of God, to both is: the divine promise of the Davidic House applied : 'I shall be his father, he shall be my son,' both are looked for 'to save Israel,' and to 'slay the wicked with the breath of his lips.' These and similar correspondences indicate that the Church's description of its Davidic Messiah followed a well-defined, pre-existent pattern. There is nothing particularly revolu- tionary in this, and it would probably have caused no undue comment had not the Ameri- can magazine misquoted the statement as 'a well-defined Essenic pattern' and placed it directly after my hypothesis that the founder of the Qumran community had met his end by crucifixion under a wicked priest of the' Jews and was expected to come again as Messiah. There may possibly he something significant in this parallel, but it was not to this that my `pattern' statement referred. In fact, the resur- rected priest was quite separate in Qumran thought from the lay, Davidic Messiah with whom these Christian correspondences may be drawn. The one is a priestly Meisiah, having in all things precedence over the other, his lay counterpart. with whom he is expected to appear in the last days.
In the New Testament, of course, there is only one Messiah, Jesus, and into the common pattern of 'son-ship' there has been infused a 'divinity' which is not apparent in Qumran. Thus the differences between the New Testa- ment and Qumran in this matter are consider- able, as I have had occasion before to point out. It might 'be debated whether these differ- ences were so apparent in the thought of the very first Christians, but that is one of those problems which must await the discovery of Christian manuscripts contemporary with the first days of the Church and the latter years of the Qumran community.—Yours faithfully,
JOHN ALLEGRO
12 St. Ives Crescent, Brooklands, Sale, Cheshire
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