Professor Eisenman is a personal friend. I respect his work very much and hope that your interest in history will encourage you to get a copy. This was truly a modern day suspense mystery. Eisenman is a rarity, a courageous academic.
Breaking
the Dead Sea Scrolls Monopoly: A New Interpretation of the Messianic
Movement in Palestine: Robert Eisenman: 9781725750456:
Amazon.com: Books
In
this book, Professor Robert Eisenman details his struggles to break the
monopoly on the Dead Sea Scrolls enjoyed by “The Official Team” and
open them up to all: scholars and lay people alike. This monopoly had
been going on for almost 40 years where only a select few with identical
views could see the entire corpus, while the vast majority of outsiders
could only see what this Establishment chose to publish with their
always like-minded interpretations. To break through this monopoly,
Prof. Eisenman followed a series of fortuitous steps. First, in the
mid-1980’s he was fortunate enough to obtain a complete copy of The
Official Israel Antiquities Authority List of all the existing Scroll
fragments and documents. In about the same year, while an N.E.H. Fellow
at The Albright Institute (“The American School” where the Scrolls first
came in, in 1948), on the very first day of his arrival he was also
fortunate enough to meet the actual photographer who photographed them.
With the help of Michael Baigent (z”l), he was able to convince this
individual to make over a second copy of all the plates to him. Then
after many adventures - some positive, some negative - he was able to
arrange for their complete publication in two volumes. In this book, for
the first time Prof. Eisenman will reveal the name of this individual.
In the second part, he will go through the meaning of the Scrolls - why
based on the contents of the Documents themselves and not inaccurate
preconceptions this is actually “The Literature of the Messianic
Movement in Palestine” or what the author sometimes alludes to as
“Palestinian Christianity”. As such, it is the very opposite of
thatoverseas development of “Normative Christianity” we all know – i.e.,
“Pauline Christianity” - which developed in Romeand Alexandria and was
abominated by these “Messianists” at Qumran. Its progenitor, Paul, will
be identified in the book as a descendant of Herod and the personal and
absolute “Enemy” of“James the Brother of Jesus,” called “The Just One”
and “The Leader of the Movement in Palestine” equivalent to “The
Righteous Teacher” in the Dead Sea Scrolls.