Robert Eisenman

Robert H. Eisenman is an American archaeologist and Biblical scholar. He is most famous for his controversial work on the Dead Sea Scrolls and the origins of Christianity.

Current Position

He was the Professor of Middle East Religions and Archaeology and Director of the Institute for the Study of Judeo-Christian Origins at California State University, Long Beach. Also, he is Visiting Senior Member of Linacre College, Oxford University, and member of the National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow at the Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem. He also was a Senior Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Postgraduate Hebrew Studies.

Liberation of the Dead Sea Scrolls

From the 1980s he was one of the leading figures in the worldwide campaign to gain access to the Dead Sea Scrolls, due to the fact that the Scrolls were kept under wraps since their discovery in 1947 by a team of Catholic scholars originally led by Dominican friar Roland de Vaux.

In 1991-2, he was Consultant to the Huntington Library that contained photographs of the entire Dead Sea Scrolls in San Marino, California, when he took the decision to open its archives and allow free access for all scholars to consult the previously unpublished Scrolls.

Excavations

Since 1990, Eisenman lead the Judean Desert Explorations/Excavations expedition with CSULB students in Qumran, searching for possible new caves that may contain scrolls. In 1992 he used a radar groundscan on the top of the marl of Caves 4-6. During the 2002-3 season, two of his students discovered a burial enclosure at the Head of the Qumran Cemetery.

Theories

Eisenman contends that the preconceptions of the group of scholars that first discovered and worked on the Dead Sea Scrolls, led by Father Roland De Vaux, ignored possible first century provenance for many of the Scrolls, and instead consigned them to the distant past.

He considers that the Dead Sea Scrolls are Messianic-inspired documents of a pietist, patriotic and ultra-conservative Jewish party in opposition to the Roman/Herodian rule in Palestine, named the "zaddikim" or "zadokites", whom joined principally in Qumran. Eisenman identified James the Just, the "brother of Jesus", as the "Righteous Teacher" who led this opposition movement until his death at the behest of the High Priest Ananus ben Ananus in 62 C.E. He argues that the popularity of James and the illegality of his death may have triggered the First Jewish revolt against the Roman Empire from 66 to 73 C.E.

Eisenman, like other scholars, have set forth the thesis that James the Just and the zaddikim, known today as Nazorean Jews (Judeo-Christian), were marginalized by a herodian named Paul of Tarsus and the Gentile Christians who followed him. This version of Christianity, as it later emerged from the gentile milieu as led by Paul, transformed the militant teaching of the zaddikim to a universalist and peaceful doctrine.

Eisenman's thesis has been widely criticized for its depicted recreation of the alleged hostile skirmishes between the Judeo-Christian and Pauline Christianity, based upon reconstructed "proto-Christian" elements that he identified in the Dead Sea Scrolls. He is equally harsh on the Nazorean Jews at Jerusalem, whom he portrays as a nationalistic, priestly and xenophobic sect of ultra-legal pietists. His criticism deconstructs the doctrine of Christianity as principally Pauline apologetics. With this position, Eisenman attempts to "recover" what he considers to be the authentic teaching of Jesus and James from obscurity.

Amongst other theories, Eisenman notes the testimony by Josephus of Herod's execution of two of his sons and his wife Mariamne, the last representative of the Maccabean line, actually inspired the account of the Massacre of the Innocents in the Gospel of Matthew (2:16-18), since his two sons were of royal Jewish blood, and he believed they were a real threat to his power.

Works

* "Islamic Law in Palestine and Israel" E. J. Brill, Leiden (1976).
* "Maccabees, Zadokites, Christians and Qumran: A New Hypothesis of Qumran Origins" E. J. Brill, Leiden (1984).
* "James the Just in the Habakkuk Pesher" E. J. Brill Leiden (1986).
* "A Facsimile Edition of the Dead Sea Scrolls" (with James Robinson), Biblical Archaeology Society (1991).
* "The Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered" (with Michael Wise), Penguin USA (1992) ISBN 1852303689.
* "" (1997) ISBN 1842930265.
* "The Dead Sea Scrolls and the First Christians" (1996) ISBN 1852307854.
* "The New Testament Code: The Cup of the Lord, the Damascus Covenant, and the Blood of Christ" (2006) ISBN 1842931865.
* "The New Jerusalem: A Millennium Poetic/Prophetic Travel Diario 1959-1962" (2007) ISBN 1556436378.

External links

* http://roberteisenman.com - Robert Eisenman's web site, with a link to his lectures and confrerences in youtube.
* http://www.csulb.edu/centers/sjco/ - Robert Eisenman's articles, interviews and reviews of his books.