Work on scrolls brings history alive.

Byline: GREG BOLT The Register-Guard

The bits of parchment were little more than blackened flakes, their ancient words hardly visible behind centuries of smoky decay.

But to Daniel Falk, they were prayers out of the past whose words few had read since before the birth of Christ. And they were a bit of light on a dim stretch of history that has fascinated the University of Oregon professor of religious studies, who is one of a relatively small number of international scholars invited to translate portions of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Falk was interested in the scrolls as part of his doctoral research into the evolution of obligatory prayer in ancient Judaism, a tradition that has its beginnings between the third century B.C. and the first century A.D. He hoped the scrolls would offer clues to why prayer shifted from an individual act offered at times and in the manner of one's own choosing to a ceremonial practice with a structure that required certain prayers to be offered at certain times and in particular ways.

"This was a very important development, which was necessary for the survival of Judaism and integral to the development of Christianity," Falk says. "Both survived because they chose analogous solutions, and that is to spiritualize the religion."

As a doctoral student at Cambridge, Falk began to wonder if the Dead Sea Scrolls held clues to that transformation. Written by a sect known as the Essenes, who practiced a strict form of Judaism, the scrolls offer tantalizing insights into a period of great changes in Judaism and the earliest days of Christianity.

It was the time when rabbinical Judaism emerged and Christianity began to separate as a religion distinct from its Jewish origins. Falk wondered if the scrolls would show the beginnings of organized prayer, a step that ultimately led to modern church liturgy.

His interest came at a time when the Dead Sea Scrolls were at the center of a controversy over access to the original parchments and fragments. The academic community was clamoring for broader participation in the translation work, which had been moving slowly since the scrolls were discovered in 1947.

Falk first studied some "bootleg" photographs of the fragments and began doing his own translation. That brought him to the attention of the international team of editors working on the scrolls, and he was invited to travel to Jerusalem and work with the originals.

He says the fragments themselves weren't much to look at.

"Many of the fragments are so deteriorated you can't see anything except through infra-red photography," Falk says. "My pieces actually looked like burnt toast."

The fragments he translated were portions of prayer texts, and the pieces were too limited to add directly to his research. But working with them gave Falk valuable experience in translating original manuscripts, and he continues to do his own translations based on photographs of the original text as part of his ongoing research.

But being part of the translation team - even a modest part - helped advance his career as well as his research. He was invited to important conferences and received offers to publish his results, and in 1998 he accepted a tenure-track post at the UO.

Falk has continued his research into the origins of obligatory prayer as well as the interpretation and reinterpretation of Scripture. He says his work with the scrolls allows him to show his students that people at the beginnings of modern religion saw biblical texts in a far different light than they do now, something that often helps heighten students' tolerance of those with differing views on religion today.

"They're able to understand and appreciate people who can look at the same texts and come up with a very different meaning," he says. "I definitely find that my research enhances my teaching, and students pick up on that. Students do get excited by a sense of first-hand contact."

CAPTION(S):

Professor Daniel Falk, a religious studies professor, has been researching the Dead Sea Scrolls, a portion of which is shown behind him.