When I saw this special issue, “The Dead Sea Scrolls: 75 Years Since Their Historic Discovery,” published by National Geographic magazine, on the newsstand, I grabbed it eagerly. I hoped I’d find new revelations based on recent scholarship, which has not received much public exposure.

I was disappointed. This issue focuses almost exclusively on the scrolls that harmonize with the traditional versions of the scriptures. The editors’ mantra must have been to appeal to the broadest possible audience – and offend no one.

But then I read buried in these pages in the brief chapter “The Non-Biblical Manuscripts: The Writings of the Qumram Sect:”

Although a quarter of the Dead Sea Scrolls are copies from the Hebrew Bible, the remainder are non-biblical religious and secular texts that appear to describe the beliefs, rules and activities of the Qumram community. Josephus claims “[the Essenes] equally preserve the books belonging to their sect,” which could refer to these documents, bolstering the identification of the Qumram sect with the Essenes.

Besides the two pages that follow this quotation, the special-issue magazine ignores three-quarters of its purported topic.

For a more insightful treatment of that missing information, see Barbara Thiering’s disruptive and controversial scholarship, most notably in Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls. I’ve commented previously on that book here.

Thiering died years ago, and since that time her scholarship has fallen into disrepute in the academic community.

Perhaps because she dared to speak truth to power?