Dead Sea Scrolls, a Third Look

I think this essay is worth another look, as we rapidly approach the year of our Lord, 2022 .

In 1947 a Bedouin came upon an almost inaccessible cave. He found the first of the Dead Sea Scrolls. He had pitched a rock in a cave to bring his goat out of the cave. The sound when the rock hit was different. So different he went off to explore the cave.

The Romans had wiped out the Essenes about 2 millennia ago but didn’t know about their caves. The caves like all caves maintained the yearly average temperature each day. In addition the lack of humidity in the desert preserved the scrolls. It was a find that has kept a lot of archaeologists very busy. Caves with scrolls are still being discovered in this portion of this middle eastern desert.

History and theology have interfaced more precisely since the “chance” or providential finding. I am in the providential camp.

H. Robert Rubin, a best-selling, Amazon memoirist, novelist and author of Look Backward Angel, How Did I Get Through This? Please Save the Third Dance for Me and The Bloom is on the Rose, all available on Amazon

My Mind’s Eye and the Eyes of my Older Sister

“A sibling is the lens through which you see your childhood.” Ann Hood, American novelist. I agree.

My sister facilitated the process of accurately recording memories for my several published memoirs. She and I have similar temperaments. We communicate readily. She is five years older than me, giving her a better perspective on certain events in my childhood. That was particularly true of my interaction with my father in my first few years of life.

I did not get along with my late father, Harold. He was far more opaque than transparent and, was a thorn in my side until his death 27 years ago.

I have gathered of late with some newly-discovered family genealogy, that, my father, who refused to eat poultry, may have had a viable explanation for the revulsion that he never revealed. His maternal grandfather ran a poultry farm. I was unaware of that until I saw the genealogy.

In my mind’s eye, I have this picture of Harold, as a child, traumatized by the wrenching of live chicken necks, the plucking of the dead carcasses, etc. It gives me the sense that this was the problem.

My sister said Harold had problems with me from the day I left the hospital nursery. Perhaps he confused me with a plucked 🐔 as opposed to the meatloaf he ate each Thanksgiving.