The Book of Mormon and the Dead Sea Scrolls
142 2 Nephi 26:16 See the pictures of the caves. They are in dust up to their ears there because these things were actually buried under the dust. They weren’t just left there casually. These documents were buried. That’s important—and still being able to read them on the spot. They were able to pick them up and read them right off. Nephi said, “For those who shall be destroyed shall speak unto them out of the ground, and their speech shall be low out of the dust, and their voice shall be as one that hath a familiar spirit; for the Lord God will give unto him power, that he may whisper concerning them, even as it were out of the ground; and their speech shall whisper out of the dust” (2 Nephi 26:16). That’s exactly the effect you have here. They were absolutely awed and overwhelmed when they could read these records of their own ancestors—open them and read them as if they had been written the day before. “These texts were deliberately buried. The people who left these records died soon after they buried them, and died on the spot, the victims of a savage religious war. And 2 Nephi 26:16 says, “For those who shall be destroyed shall speak unto them out of the ground.”
143 The practice of fleeing to these caves [from Jerusalem] is far older than Lehi’s day. Of course, this comes seven centuries after Lehi’s day. But we know they were doing it three thousand years before—going to these same caves [the Cave of Letters], bringing their household effects, storing their valuable temple vessels, etc., in these caves. It was the usual practice. So the Lord tells them, when the “abomination of desolation” comes, then flee to the mountains and don’t turn back. You stay there; it’s going to be worse than ever [paraphrased].
143,144 These people who fled from Jerusalem to save themselves, and Lehi among them, did it for freedom. Remember what they told Zoram? Come down to us where we are in the desert, and you shall be a free man. So it is here. And compare this with Moroni’s standard: “In memory of our God, our religion, our freedom, our peace, our wives and children.” We’re talking about the Title of Liberty and the like in the Cave of Letters. We talked about Alma, son of Judah.
144 Alma 60:1,7 Here’s a very interesting thing. “This is a correspondence between Bar Kokhba and a general commanding up north,” he says. Bar Kokhba had to deal with just such characters as those Alma had to deal with, and he did it in the same way. “To the brothers [for he called them his brothers, as Moroni always called them his brothers when he wrote his letters] in the city of En-gedi [from the Cave of Letters that’s just a half-hour walk] he personally wrote a letter in Hebrew that survives to this day: ‘In comfort you sit eating and drinking from the property of the House of Israel and care nothing for your brothers.’ “ Thus Yadin says. Then we read in Alma 60:1, 7, “Behold I direct mine epistle to Pahoran in the city of Zarahemla ... and also to all those who have been chosen by this people to govern and manage the affairs of this war.... Can you think to sit upon your thrones in a state of thoughtless stupor, while your enemies are spreading the work of death around you? Yea while they are murdering thousands of your brethren.” It’s the same situation, and the same answer too. The answer was that Moroni was wrong: Pahoran hadn’t betrayed, and he had actually been driven out himself. The crooked crowd had taken over the government, and he was in hiding himself. So it was misunderstood.
145 This is Masada thirty miles down here. These deposits were made in the year A.D. 70 when the Romans under Vespasian were besieging the city. The Jews were driven out, but they came back and settled. Then they revolted under Bar Kokhba. They were beaten finally and were banished from ever coming back to Israel again. They could never come back to Jerusalem again. After A.D. 130 it was a death sentence for a Jew to be found in Jerusalem. They left documents all along here from the whole period. These aren’t the documents of some little sect, which, as Pliny says, was only four thousand people. These represented the prevailing Judaism at Jerusalem before the rabbis took over.
147 But what were they teaching before A.D. 70? That’s what we find in the Dead Sea Scrolls. It’s very clear that it’s not just the teachings of some little sect in the desert. This represented, on this broad front, people retreating by the thousands and bringing these documents. They tell us what was really being taught by the Jews in the time before the fall of Jerusalem. Here’s where we check with the Book of Mormon because these writings have been very unpopular. (I notice I had some articles here that I attached to this one.) I said that Allegro lost his job at Oxford because he pointed out in 1960 that from 1950 to 1960 the scrolls were suppressed. Anyway, Joseph Fitzmeyer said that not five percent of them had been translated. They wouldn’t touch them with a forty-foot pole.
149 They call it the Serekh Scroll now because that’s what the Hebrews call it. Isn’t it lucky though? What a break! If we hadn’t found this, we would still be wondering to this day what this could all possibly be about. But in the very first cave they opened there were seven jars against the wall. In these seven jars were manuscripts. In this was the manuscript that is the explanation of what the whole thing is about. This tells us the order of the church, why these people are here, what their object is in coming out here, etc. And it’s not sectarian here. This is a very interesting thing why they have come out here. These records have been hidden, but they were written in Jerusalem-not written out here apparently, as Golb says. There wasn’t a scriptorian. They only had two desks and one ink bottle, and that was it. No pens or anything like that.
154 A rabbi will tell you, “Well, we don’t have eternal life. Heaven is a philosophical concept.” But this is the sort of language we use, isn’t it? This is not orthodox Judaism. You can see why they didn’t want [the Dead Sea Scrolls]. It’s not orthodox Christianity either—this eternal progression thing and getting the crowns, and being tested while you are here. Then we get to the preexistence, the plan as it was made in the beginning.
154 We are going to go on with the text of the Book of Mormon next time. But this is important: “For they are the chosen of God for an eternal covenant, and to them is all the glory of Adam.” This has upset everybody. They say, “Well, it means man” But it’s not HA-ADAM; there’s no article. It’s a very interesting thing. When Jastrow translated it he wrote, “all the glory of man.” Then in a footnote in the back he said, “This reads ‘the glory of Adam,’ but, of course, we can’t accept that because Adam fell and he didn’t have any glory. He brought ‘death into the world and all our woes.’ “ They don’t like Adam. But when it says “theirs is all the glory of Adam,” you can see why they didn’t like to publish any more scrolls. They don’t want them, and they’ve not been published. You don’t read about them, and there isn’t much excitement about them. They haven’t translated even a fraction of them yet. They know what’s there. It’s amazing, but they don’t like it very much.
154 This is very important for the Book of Mormon. You can see that because this is the religion of the Book of Mormon. This is the language that Moroni and Nephi use. This was just the beginning. All of these documents use that particular literary genre, the revelations and the histories, etc. And it’s right out of Lehi’s people; yes, indeed.