15 chemin des Colombettes
1202 Geneva,Switzerland
e-mail 102142.1366@CompuServe.com
April 26, 1997
BBC World
Bush House
London, ENGLAND
Sirs:
Today I watched your fascinating program telling the story of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
I happened to be stationed at the American Consulate in Manchester when the scrolls were first discovered, and followed the early progress of professor John Allegro at Manchester University, as recounted in The Guardian (then still in Manchester). As the years went by I saw only rare and brief news articles with respect to progress on preparing the scrolls for publicatiton. From the beginning the scrolls appeared to provide striking new insights for early Christian, or late pre-Christian/pre-Rabbincal understanding. From your program I now understand that Catholic (and other) biblical scholars have been monopolizing the fragments, withholding them from publication or wider dissemination out of concerns over their impact on traditional Christian and rabbinical) teachings. You say that this monopoly was broken by scholars at the University of Chicago.
It is my understanding (and has so been reported in the news, including the International Herald Tribune ) that it was a Brigham Young University scholar who performed the task of piecing together extracts previously published by one or another "official" scroll. scholar on his computer, thus breaking the monopoly.
Among the enigmas mentioned in the program was how the scrolls could tell of a Teacher of Righteousness who was to be killed for his people, written on scrolls carbon dated to a period before Christ's birth; and how the Qumrun (Essene?) Community could have been practicing baptism and participating in a sacred ceremonial meal not unlike the Eucharist, once more well before Christ.
Here, again, Brigham Young University scholars are making a significant contribution to resolving these apparent enigmas. The Book of Mormon , much like the Dead Sea Scrolls in its manner of discovery and importance as a pre-Christian source, makes it clear that a knowledge of a coming Savior, together with many of the sacraments which would later define Christianity under the leadership of Peter, James, John, Paul -- and other apostles, were known and practiced by various inspired religious communities in both the New and Old Worlds -- even if such understanding was not particularly widespread.
The B of M recounts how the peoples (of at least one region of the Western Hemisphere) were told in their scriptures by their prophets of the coming Christ; were taught to pursue righteous communal living (paralleling reports of the disciples "having all things in common" [Act s 2:44]); participated in a ritual communal meal commemorating the death of the Savior; and practiced baptism as the ceremonial entry into the Kingdom of God. If the Dead Sea Scrolls are a threat to Catholicism, traditional Protestantism, and Rabbinical Judaism, they are welcome substantiation of the teachings of the Gospel as understood and taught by the restored Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for the past hundred and seventy years. Indeed, the B of M asserts that such additional light and knowledge would be forthcoming in support of its teachings. I think that in the Dead Sea Scrolls we have some of the most important substantiation of the validity of Book of Mormon teachings to date.
Sincerely,
David Brighton Timmins, PhD (Harvard)
Professor of Finance & Economics, Webster University - Geneva
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