Author Archives: Bob

About Bob

He is Emeritus Professor of Middle East Religions and Archaeology and Islamic Law and the Director of the Institute for the Study of Judeo-Christian Origins at California State University Long Beach and Visiting Senior Member of Linacre College, Oxford. He holds a B.A. from Cornell University in Philosophy and Engineering Physics (1958), an M.A. from New York University in Near Eastern Studies (1966), and a Ph.D from Columbia University in Middle East Languages and Cultures and Islamic Law (1971). He was a Senior Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Postgraduate Hebrew Studies and an American Endowment for the Humanities Fellow-in-Residence at the Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem, where the Dead Sea Scrolls were first examined.

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Islamic Law in Palestine and Israel: A History of the Survival of Tanzimat and Shari’a in the British Mandate and the Jewish State

Robert Eisenman’s classic work, Islamic Law in Palestine and Israel: A History of the Survival of Tanzimat and Sharia,  examines how Islamic law, such as Sharia law, survived in Palestine and Israel in a pure form perhaps longer than in any other Ottoman successor state.

It did this for a variety of reasons, chief among which are the innate conservatism of the British and the inability of the Israelis, particularly in the country’s early days, to do much about it. Besides Lebanon and Gaza, only in Israel did those three great monuments of Islamic and Ottoman modernism: the Ottoman Law of Family Rights, the Ottoman Land Code, and the Mecelle-i Akham-i Adliye, survive simultaneously.

Author, Robert Eisenman, traces this continuity from Ottoman times in terms understandable to both specialists, lawyers, and laypersons. The anomaly of Islamic laws’, such as Sharia law, survival against the backdrop of British legal concepts and renascent Jewish nationalism is delineated completely. Detailed attention is also given to the effect, or non-effect, of such Israeli reforms in Women’s Equal Rights Law on the Muslim community and on Islamic law, as well as to the creation of Israeli hybrid laws, such as the Land Law of 1969, and a new Israeli modernism.

The situation in Israel today remains more or less the same. In some areas beyond the 1967 Green Lines, where Israeli Law has been applied, it is as described in this book. In others, which have not been annexed or where it has not, Jordanian Law for the most part still obtains.

Publisher’s Note for those who have purchased the eBook: The print version of this text contains a number of complex characters used to aid the reader in transliterating Arabic, Hebrew, and Turkish words. Due to the limitations of various eReaders, characters with full diacritical markings may not appear in all digital versions. To ensure readers of all eBook versions obtain the full experience of Professor Eisenman’s work, a full PDF version of the glossary and table of Palestine and Israel cases can be downloaded by clicking this link.

This book is part of the Amazon Kindle Match Program (Amazon’s terms and conditions apply). A free Kindle edition is available when one purchases a print edition of this book through Amazon. See the Amazon book listing for more information or visit the Kindle Match Program’s page for more information about the program.

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Triphammer Falls, An Ivy League Jewish Romance

Sixty years ago, James Levin, a liberated Jew from the New Jersey Suburbs, met up by accident at a Fraternity Party with Suzanne Fisher, a Jewish girl from Brooklyn whom, generally, he would have looked down upon.A junior, he had just transferred his interests in Einstein and nuclear physics to Nietzsche, Joyce, and classical music while she–a totally unknown Freshman–was just being rushed by several Jewish Sororities (they had such things in those days–Fraternities too–even in his father’s who had also belonged to one).

A Jewish girl from Brooklyn? That was unheard of. Impossible. He could not be seen dead with such a girl–especially by his brother finishing up his ROTC service in Korea. 

But this one was different. This one could play the piano and, when she played, her fingers moved over the keyboard as if in a dream. This one had transferred from Erasmus H.S. in Brooklyn to The New York School of Performing Arts and could play Chopin by heart as if she owned him, caressed him, loved him–and she had been in Paris! This one he could not resist.

Why could she play Chopin as if inhabiting his soul? Because of her father, a refugee from Vienna and in Brooklyn nothing more than a lowly numbers-collector–though her mother’s father had built some early pushcart activity in this same Brooklyn to a Seat on the New York Stock Exchange. Her father, who had lost a sister whom he obviously adored to the Nazis during the War, spared no mercy in beating his only daughter into her replica. Both presumably could play Chopin and, yes, her father beat her–beat her to the point that she was petrified of him.

This was the girl, James Levin suddenly encountered in the middle of his Junior Year at Cornell. Something of a change from Eisenman’s usual genre, a novel–fiction instead of discourse, which the public might find even more attractive as he was probably a better writer then before he went academic. Therefore, though some 55 years old, nothing has been changed in the manuscript–so well did it read in the original–except some punctuation and sentence structure.

Because Triphammer Falls was written shortly after the pivotal time period being portrayed (in the late 50’s), it offers a veritable time capsule of a Period people still find and realize to be fascinating. 

A real change of pace for him, it was in fact written before people like Thomas Pynchon–who preceded him at Cornell but quit to join the Navy–wrote V and Philip Roth–who was writing about the people he knew personally in South Orange, NJ (especially the girl with the “nose job”, who went around with a diaphragm in her purse and whose brother went on to play basketball at Ohio State)–wrote many of his works.

Not only is it extremely well-written but the authenticity of the writing gives one a sense of reading really-fine literature rather than simply a good novel and what is especially noteworthy or impressive is how the work captures a Period now vanished with a “feel-like-you’re-there” immediacy. As such, it is a fluid and informal first-person narrative, just as accurate as Roth, but perhaps even more attractive.

It covers first loves and partying Ivy-League style in a world few still remember when College life was a different world and the Fraternity House was a Gentleman’s League. Something of a preamble to or cross between Madmen and The Social Network, somewhere between the Beats and the Hippies, a young man has to choose between the neat path laid out for him in New York City’s corporate world and Madison Avenue or another road that will take him across Continents. 

The protagonist unexpectedly falls in love with Suzanne Fisher, a Freshman, just when he is on the verge of leaving College to find his own way in a rapidly-changing world. In the end, the reader is left to wonder whether it is Fisher, a talented and ambitious pianist, or his own non-conformity that will send him on a different path through countries and halfway round the world.

This book is part of the Amazon Kindle Match Program (Amazon’s terms and conditions apply). A free Kindle edition is available when one purchases a print edition of this book through Amazon. See the Amazon book listing for more information or visit the Kindle Match Program’s page for more information about the program.

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The New Testament Code Companion Edition

The New Testament Code Companion Synopsis

In the original editions of this book, because of its length, none of the publishers include the footnotes. Professor Eisenman was obliged to post them for the interested reader on his own websites. To add insult to injury, the publication was so unproofed and rushed, no attention was paid to duplications and sometimes duplicating sequencing. But these footnotes are good and, aside from these defects, packed with information—sometimes even new information. Therefore, we felt the serious reader should have them readily available and included them in a separate document. These materials include endnotes, maps, photographs, and genealogical/chronological charts. Readers won’t be sorry and there are a number of different options for viewing the end materials.

  • For those wishing a “side-by-side” reading experience with the end materials, we have published The New Testament Code Companion Edition (ISBN 9781944066109). The Companion Edition is available in print only and avalibility can be found in the links below.
  • A PDF is available for download, free of charge. Scroll down the page and click on the download banner.
  • For those readers who purchased this edition via Amazon, you can take advantage of their Kindle MatchBook program. A free Kindle eBook edition of this text is available to you. Due to the flexibility of eBooks, all the end material is included in the digital edition. See this book’s page on Amazon for more details. This offer is bound to Amazon’s terms and conditions of the Kindle MatchBook program and may change without notification to the publisher.

In The New Testament Code: The Cup of the Lord, the Damascus Covenant, and the Blood of Christworld-renowned scholar and bestselling author Robert Eisenman uncovers the Truth and unravels the real code behind New Testament allusions like “this is the Cup of the New Covenant in my blood” and connects them to “the New Covenant in the Land of Damascus” and “drinking the Cup of the Wrath of God” in the Dead Sea Scrolls.

In doing so, Eisenman demonstrates the integral relationship of James the Brother of Jesus to the Righteous Teacher of the Dead Sea Scrolls, deciphers the way the picture of “Jesus” was put together in the Gospels, and clarifies the real history of Palestine in the first century and, as a consequence, what can be known about the real “Jesus.” In paring away the traces of Greco-Roman anti-Semitism—which were deliberately introduced into “this picture” thereby tainting Western history ever since—The New Testament Code shows what really happened in Palestine in that time, not what the enemies of those making war against Rome wanted people to think happened.

In making these arguments and exposing these revisions, overwrites, and falsifications that were introduced into the New Testament, Eisenman also explains the esoteric meaning of many of the usages with which we are all so familiar in the Western World. In doing so, he identifies the Scrolls as the literature of ‘the Messianic Movement in Palestine’ and ‘decodes’ many well-known and beloved sayings in the Gospels such as, “Every Plant which My Heavenly Father has not planted shall be uprooted,” “Do not throw Holy Things to dogs,” “A man shall not be known by what goes into his mouth but, rather, by what comes out of it,” and “These are the signs that the Lord did in Cana of Galilee.” Offering a thorough and in-depth, point-by-point analysis of James’ relationship to the Dead Sea Scrolls, he illumines such subjects as the “Pella Flight,” “the Wilderness Camps,” and Paul as an “Herodian,” exposing Peter’s true historical role as “a prototypical Essene,” who was used in the Gospels and the Book of Acts as a mouthpiece for Anti-Semitism, and demonstrating how, once we have found the Historical James, we have found the Historical Jesus.

He covers new archaeological discoveries along the Dead Sea, AMS radiocarbon dating of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the controversial almost miraculous appearance of the “James Ossuary” (which he considers having been based on his book on James) and the reasons for its being considered a fraud. A crucial new point that emerges in The New Testament Code is the identification of the document known as the MMT as a Letter from James to someone early Church Fathers call the “Great King of the Peoples beyond the Euphrates.” Readers will not be disappointed.

The crowning point of all his arguments will be his exposition of the relationship of “the New Covenant in the Land of Damascus” in the Dead Sea Scrolls to the ritual of “the Last Supper;” and ‘the Cup’ connected to both, to be but a parody–one of the other. The final mysteries of the Dead Sea Scrolls as they relate to Peter, Paul and James will be elucidated. Did Paul know the meaning of the famous Damascus Document, discovered in the Cairo Genizah in 1897, “to set the Holy Things up according to their precise specifications”? Or the reverse of it, as Peter was presented as discovering it in the Books of Acts—to make “no distinctions between Holy and profane”? These and many other questions will be revealed in The New Testament Code.

Book Details
Pages: 314
Primary BISAC Category: REL006400
Religion / Biblical Studies / Exegesis & Hermeneutics
Print ISBN-13: 9781944066109
Print ISBN-10: 1944066101
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The New Testament Code The Cup of the Lord, the Damascus Covenant, and the Blood of Christ 2nd Edition

In The New Testament Code: The Cup of the Lord, the Damascus Covenant, and the Blood of Christworld-renowned scholar and bestselling author Robert Eisenman uncovers the Truth and unravels the real code behind New Testament allusions like “this is the Cup of the New Covenant in my blood” and connects them to “the New Covenant in the Land of Damascus” and “drinking the Cup of the Wrath of God” in the Dead Sea Scrolls.

In doing so, Eisenman demonstrates the integral relationship of James the Brother of Jesus to the Righteous Teacher of the Dead Sea Scrolls, deciphers the way the picture of “Jesus” was put together in the Gospels, and clarifies the real history of Palestine in the first century and, as a consequence, what can be known about the real “Jesus.” In paring away the traces of Greco-Roman anti-Semitism—which were deliberately introduced into “this picture” thereby tainting Western history ever since—The New Testament Code shows what really happened in Palestine in that time, not what the enemies of those making war against Rome wanted people to think happened.

In making these arguments and exposing these revisions, overwrites, and falsifications that were introduced into the New Testament, Eisenman also explains the esoteric meaning of many of the usages with which we are all so familiar in the Western World. In doing so, he identifies the Scrolls as the literature of ‘the Messianic Movement in Palestine’ and ‘decodes’ many well-known and beloved sayings in the Gospels such as, “Every Plant which My Heavenly Father has not planted shall be uprooted,” “Do not throw Holy Things to dogs,” “A man shall not be known by what goes into his mouth but, rather, by what comes out of it,” and “These are the signs that the Lord did in Cana of Galilee.” Offering a thorough and in-depth, point-by-point analysis of James’ relationship to the Dead Sea Scrolls, he illumines such subjects as the “Pella Flight,” “the Wilderness Camps,” and Paul as an “Herodian,” exposing Peter’s true historical role as “a prototypical Essene,” who was used in the Gospels and the Book of Acts as a mouthpiece for Anti-Semitism, and demonstrating how, once we have found the Historical James, we have found the Historical Jesus.

He covers new archaeological discoveries along the Dead Sea, AMS radiocarbon dating of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the controversial almost miraculous appearance of the “James Ossuary” (which he considers having been based on his book on James) and the reasons for its being considered a fraud. A crucial new point that emerges in The New Testament Code is the identification of the document known as the MMT as a Letter from James to someone early Church Fathers call the “Great King of the Peoples beyond the Euphrates.” Readers will not be disappointed.

The crowning point of all his arguments will be his exposition of the relationship of “the New Covenant in the Land of Damascus” in the Dead Sea Scrolls to the ritual of “the Last Supper;” and ‘the Cup’ connected to both, to be but a parody–one of the other. The final mysteries of the Dead Sea Scrolls as they relate to Peter, Paul and James will be elucidated. Did Paul know the meaning of the famous Damascus Document, discovered in the Cairo Genizah in 1897, “to set the Holy Things up according to their precise specifications”? Or the reverse of it, as Peter was presented as discovering it in the Books of Acts—to make “no distinctions between Holy and profane”? These and many other questions will be revealed in The New Testament Code.http://www.gravedistractions.com/ntc.php

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The New Testament Code

 Gospels, Apostles and the Dead Sea Scrolls

Konecky & Konecky, 2014

“What has come to be known as the Dead Sea Scrolls constituted a library of religious texts in the possession of a radical Jewish sect that flourished around the time of Christ.  They offer a unique window into the ideology and religious sentiments of a period that witnessed both the birth of Rabbinic Judaism and the new religious movement that was to become Christianity.

For 35 years a committee established by the Jordanian Department of Antiquities exercised strict control over the find, making the scrolls their exclusive property.  Robert Eisenman spearheaded the efforts to break the stranglehold of the committee and make the scrolls widely available.  His efforts and those of like-minded scholars finally resulted in 1988 in the publication of the entire corpus of the scrolls.

In The New Testament Code Professor Eisenman marshals his encyclopaedic knowledge of scriptures, the scrolls and the entire body of early Christian, Jewish and Islamic writings to present a profound and provocative reading of the New Testament.  He argues that the scrolls offer the key to understanding its true meaning.  At issue are the relationship between James, the brother of Jesus, and the apostle Paul; their strenuous debates over the observance of Mosaic Law; the messianic and apocalyptic movements that presaged the destruction of the Second Temple; the hidden meaning of the “Cup of the Lord” and the “Blood of Christ”; and the beginnings of the Christian Church.

Eisenman’s intrepid scholarship reveals the sinews beneath the surface meaning of texts to present a comprehensive and convincing argument that turns much conventional thinking on its he’d.  Here is an analysis that Jews, Christians, and anyone interested in the founding documents of Western culture will find immeasurably rewarding.”

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James the Brother of Jesus

The Key to Unlocking the Secrets of Early Christianity and the Dead Sea Scrolls. Penguin, 1998.

“In a profound and provocative work of scholarly detection, Eisenman establishes James – a figure almost entirely marginalized in the New Testament – as the leader of all opposition groups in the Jerusalem of his day and the spiritual heir to his famous brother Jesus. James, not Peter, was the true successor to the movement we now call Christianity. Once we have found the Historical James we have found the Historical Jesus.

“Drawing on the Dead Sea Scrolls and on long overlooked early Christian texts, Eisenman reveals in this groundbreaking major exploration the Christianity of Paul as a distortion of what James preached.”

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The New Testament code

The Cup of the Lord, the Damascus Covenant, and the Blood of Christ. Barnes and Noble, 2006.

“Eisenman uncovers the Truth and unravels the real code behind New Testament allusions like ‘this is the Cup of the New Covenant in my blood,’ connecting them to ‘the New Covenant in the Land of Damascus’ and ‘drinking the Cup of the Wrath of God’ in the Dead Sea Scrolls. In doing so, Eisenman demonstrates the integral relationship of James the Brother of Jesus to the Righteous Teacher of the Dead Sea Scrolls, deciphers the way the picture of ‘Jesus’ was put together in the Gospels, and clarifies the real history of Palestine in the First Century and, as a consequence, what can be known about the real ‘Jesus’. In paring away the traces of Greco-Roman anti-Semitism – which were deliberately introduced into this picture, thereby tainting Western history ever since – The New Testament Code shows what really happened in Palestine in that time, not what the enemies of those making war against Rome wanted people to think happened.”

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Dead Sea Scrolls And The First Christians

Harper Collins, 1996.

“Included in this volume are Professor Eisenman’s two ground-breaking works, Maccabees, Zadokites, Christians and Qumran and James the Just in Habbakkuk Pesher, which were not previously widely available.”

“These classics are a foundation piece of Professor Eisenman’s research on the Dead Sea Scrolls and fascinating for the beginner and scholar alike. Most importantly, these works triggered the debate over the relationship of the Dead Sea Scrolls to Christian Origns, which ultimately led to the freeing of the Scrolls in the early 1990s, a struggle in which Eisenman played a pivotal role.”

“Also included are previously unpublished papers and essays written by Eisenman and presented at international conferences over the last decade. Together they provide a most thorough examination of the Dead Sea Scrolls and link them more closely with first century Christianity.”

“In addition, this volume provides new translations of three key Qumran documents, the Habakkuk Pesher, the Damascus Document, and the Community Rule, available previously in the sometimes inaccurate and often inconsistent renderings by consensus scholars, missing the electric brilliance of the writers of the Scrolls. For the first time, the reader will have a chance to see the difference between these and a translation that grasps the apocalyptic mindset of the authors of the Scrolls.”

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The New Jerusalem

The New Jerusalem: A Millenium Poetic/Prophetic Travel Diario (1959-1962), North Atlantic Books, 2007, is a collection of his youthful travel poems from 1959-62 when Paris was still ‘a moveable feast’ and when he was ‘on the road’ between Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Greece, Turkey, Israel, Iran, Beleuchistan, Pakistan, and India. Includes an Afterward on the Six-Day War, April-June, 1967.

“Eisenman…reveals an unexpectedly lyrical voice in this collection of poems, written between 1959 and 1962 on the overland trail to India via Paris (when it was still ‘a Moveable Feast’), Israel, Turkey, Iran, and Pakistan. A backpacker’s journal in free verse – which can be looked upon as an ‘anti-Beat Manifesto’ and even includes some ‘quasi-prophecy’ – The New Jerusalem not only starts out in San Francisco, but is also an intimate self-portrait of a young man at a turning point in his spiritual development.”

Article involving The New Jerusalem: “Robert Eisenman – Man of New Ideas.” Allan Koay in The Star (Malaysia), Dec. 5, 2010.

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The Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered

The First Complete Translation and Interpretation of 50 Key Documents Withheld for Over 35 Years(with Michael Wise). Penguin, 1992.

“Compiled by scholars Robert Eisenman and Michael Wise, these fifty documents cast a startling light on events in Palestine at the dawn of Christianity. They portray not a family of peaceful Essenes but a fiercely militant religious sect whose members awaited an apocalyptic Day of Vengeance. The authors speak of a messiah and the ressurection of the dead. They allude not only to doctrines we now recognize as Christian but also to the percursors of Islam and Jewish Kabbalism. Providing precise transliterations into modern Hebrew characters and English translations, and accompanied by detailed commentaries, ‘The dead sea scrolls uncovered’ represents a quantum leap in our knowledge of the ancient origins of modern faith.”

 

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James The Just In The Habakkuk Pesher

This is the follow-up work to Prof. Eisenman’s Maccabees, Zadokites, Christians, and Qumran: A New Hypothesis of Qumran Origins, in which he attempts to prove in a case-by-case manner some of the hypotheses he suggested in that original ground-breaking work.E.J. Brill Leiden, 1986.

“Both works turn out to be, surprisingly enough, just about exactly the same number of pages and what Prof. Eisenman does in this short volume is to go through what is known by scholars as “The Habakkuk Pesher” and laymen, “The Habakkuk Commentary” – “Pesher” in Hebrew having the same sense as “Commentary” in English – in a line-by-line, passage-by-passage fashion; and meticulously set forth just how they can relate to known events, ideas, and happenstances known from and associated with the life of James or as all Early Christian accounts would have it: “James the Just” (the cognomen, “the Just One” of course, being at all times all-important) or “James the Zaddik.””

“As everyone knows, he has expanded this in two 1000+ page books since: James the Brother of Jesus: The Key to Unlocking the Secrets of Early Christianity and the Dead Sea Scrolls (1997-98) and The New Testament Code: The Cup of the Lord, the Damascus Covenant, and the Blood of Christ (2006) and two shorter ones: James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls I and II (2012 and 2013); but these two initial volumes represent his first forays into this territory. Once again, despite the impression by a few critics, who try make light of or marginalize his theories or scholarship (as if they could produce anything better); as in MZCQ, he absolutely distinguishes between “the Spouter of Lies” or “Lying” (the so-called “Liar” or “Scoffer” – for Eisenman, a more accurate translation of this last being “the Jester”) and “the Wicked Priest”; and this dichotomy has withstood the test of time and initiated a host of imitators.”

“Not only does he make it clear – despite some simplistic “Consensus” theorizing – that these two are utterly different; but, in doing so, he absolutely confirms through internal analysis a First Century CE date for principal Qumran original Documents (called by so-called ‘consensus scholars’, “Sectarian”), a position he already basically set forth in MZCQ. The first, of course, is an internal ideological Adversary of the hero of the Scrolls, “the Righteous Teacher” – “the Liar” who “denied the Law in the midst of their entire Congregation” – the second, the present Establishment High Priest and this, definitively not a “Maccabean” but the reigning “Herodian” one.”

It is he who is responsible for the death or destruction of “the Righteous Teacher” and some of those with him – called revealingly “the Poor” – “the Ebionim” in the Hebrew of the Scrolls and very probably equivalent to “the Ebionites” of Early Church History about whom Eusebius in the 4th Century is so contemptuous and scathing of. These and many other things are meticulously delineated in this, Eisenman’s first foray into a line-by-line decipherment of the Habakkuk Pesher – having already dealt definitively and in detail with the twin issues of Archaeology and Paleography in MZCQ preceding it. Both of these very-hard-to-acquire books will not, it is hoped, disappoint, Prof. Eisenman’s many admirers.”

Maccabees

Maccabees, Zadokites, Christians and Qumran

A New Hypothesis of Qumran Origins. E.J. Brill, Leiden, 1984.

“This is Eisenman’s original, ground-breaking work in which he criticizes the archaeology and paleography of Qumran as it had been developed by ‘the specialists’ up to that time and rather offers his own hypothesis-starting with the fact that it was impossible to consider that the Maccabees were the so-called “Wicked Priests” at Qumran, primarily because everything known about them agrees, for the most part, with the doctrines and positions emanating from the documents known at that time to emanate from the area known as “Qumran” along the Northwestern part of the Dead Sea and which, for that reason, we call “The Dead Sea Scrolls”.

“In addition, he shows rather that the Establishment against whom the Qumran Scrolls were in an almost homogeneous manner directed was rather that of the Herodians and the Priests that owed both their appointment and authority to them and the Roman Governors that in due course either replaced or ruled either through or in conjunction with them. He also starts in this work to build his case for the fact that the individual came to be understood in Early Christian History as “James the Righteous” and called by everyone “James the Just”-that same individual known by everyone as as “James the Brother of Jesus”-had very much in common with “the Righteous Teacher” described and alluded to in many Dead Sea Scrolls documents. That is why this book, originally published in the early 1980s, was subtitled “A New Hypothesis of Qumran Origins”

“It was necessary to subject both the archaeology and paleography of Qumran-upon which the so-called “Establishment” or “Consensus of Qumran Scholars’ had all based both their theories and chronology to thoroughgoing criticism. This he has done, as only someone who originally studied math and physics, could do, in a meticulously masterful fashion. No one has ‘laid a glove’ on his analysis since. At the same time and in parallel fashion, he starts to suggest that the ‘opponent’ of this individual in Early Christian History, Paul, had about the same amount of characteristics with the individual these same Qumran Documents are constantly referring to as “The Spouter of Lying”, “the Liar” or “Man of Lying”, or “the Scoffer” or Jester” (not someone to be taken seriously)-but, of course, this is not the same individual as “the Wicked Priest” whom prestigious Qumran ‘scholars’ on the highest level insist upon saddling him with because they saw “the Wicked Priest” and “the Lying Spouter” described in Qumran Documents as the same individual.”

“Eisenman lays out here in very clear terms that the two individuals denoted as “the Wicked Priest” and “the Lying Spouter” were two distinct and absolutely separate persons-this again, despite what some ‘scholars’ attempt to foist on him in order to try to make him look ridiculous . No, on the contrary, in doing so, they only make themselves look ridiculous. Eisenman is very careful here – “the Spouter of Lying” is an internal opponent of “the Righteous Teacher” at Qumran. “He denied the Law in the midst of the whole Congregation”! “The Wicked Priest – certainly no ‘Maccabean’/’Hasmonean’ – was rather an Establishment and probably Herodian High Priest, meaning, appointed by the “Herodians” and their Roman Overlords”.

“It was this individual who was responsible either for the destruction or the death of “the Righteous Teacher”-a situation very much paralleling a number of such similar situations described, albeit rather tendentiously, in the New Testament and, of course, by Josephus. Anyone who picks up this short Book with its copious footnotes (much of the argument being conducted there, so his gainsayers would, of course, had to have first had a look at these before criticizing him-which usually they have not) will not be disappointed. It is and was his first salvo in the ongoing and running battle he has been conducting with “Consensus” and “Establishment Scholars” ever since and – to his credit – with no little effect.”

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The Dead Sea Scrolls and the First Christians (New Edition)

Essays and Translations, 2013

“Included in this volume are Professor Eisenman’s two ground-breaking works, Maccabees, Zadokites, Christians and Qumran and James the Just in Habbakkuk Pesher, which were not previously widely available.”

“These classics are a foundation piece of Professor Eisenman’s research on the Dead Sea Scrolls and fascinating for the beginner and scholar alike. Most importantly, these works triggered the debate over the relationship of the Dead Sea Scrolls to Christian Origns, which ultimately led to the freeing of the Scrolls in the early 1990s, a struggle in which Eisenman played a pivotal role.”

“Also included are previously unpublished papers and essays written by Eisenman and presented at international conferences over the last decade. Together they provide a most thorough examination of the Dead Sea Scrolls and link them more closely with first century Christianity.”

“In addition, this volume provides new translations of three key Qumran documents, the Habakkuk Pesher, the Damascus Document, and the Community Rule, available previously in the sometimes inaccurate and often inconsistent renderings by consensus scholars, missing the electric brilliance of the writers of the Scrolls. For the first time, the reader will have a chance to see the difference between these and a translation that grasps the apocalyptic mindset of the authors of the Scrolls.”