Regarding Allegro and the Copper Scroll, this what I learned from a TV documentary.
Allegro was the first person to see the text. He sent his translation to de Vaux. He was expecting congratulations, but the reaction was not to tell anyone. He then translated the second part of the scroll. This time he did not even get a rejection letter. De Vaux refused to let him publish anything at all about the Copper Scroll. Allegro protested, but de Vaux acted decisively. Allegro was ostracised — he was not allowed into the laboratory or lectures, he was threatened with his contract not being renewed, thus loss of job. Later Father Josef Milik published his official translation of the scroll. Allegro knew that the wording was incorrect, was outraged, and against the orders of de Vaux published The Treasure of the Copper Scroll.
At this point we should note that the scroll did not seem to contain anything especially damaging to Christianity, rather seemed to be describing the locations of some hidden treasure. Later, some of these were located, following the instructions in the Scroll, but had been vandalised, so that no treasure was actually discovered.
What we do learn, however, is that there were clear attempts at censorship and editing, which was the point of my article. What else was censored and edited by others on the team, i.e. the scrolls that were not Allegro’s responsibility, which may have been more damaging to Christianity? After all, he did say that he had information that would bring down the Church [his advice to Strugnell, “by the time I’ve finished there won’t be any Church left for you to join”. I’ll be going into this more in future articles].
In which case the problem was not resolved, because we will never know what the team did in secret. I am willing, however, to accept that we probably now have most of the original texts. It’s of course any missing bits that would be of most interest.
Regarding Salibi, there is no evidence in his writing that he has a pan-arabic bias, nor does he argue for national land possession (unless you think that this is his secret agenda). On the contrary, he states clearly that Jerusalem is the Holy City; he just wants to get the true history sorted out.
I have a copy of Finkelstein’s book with Silberman, but haven’t looked at it for a while. A brief perusal of the wikipedia page shows nothing that contradicts Salibi’s analysis, and has various points which might confirm it [feel free to point anything out I’ve missed].
Regarding Jesus and Pharisees, I agree with what you say about modern Christianity, but I don’t think that’s a completely appropriate analogy for what we are talking about. More detail is required. Clearly all strands of Christianity start with Jesus. So we can perhaps also say that all ‘Judaism’ started with Moses, in which case you are correct. There does appear to have been a serious schism later, however, as argued by Salibi (sorry to bring him up again). This explains why Paul was persecuting the followers of Jesus: “I was violently persecuting the church of God and was trying to destroy it. I advanced in Judaism beyond many among my people of the same age…” (Galatians 1.13–14). I obviously know that different strands of Christianity can hate each other and be violent towards each other, witness Ireland in the twentieth century. But I do think there’s more to it than just splitting hairs.
I will eventually get round to my ultimate points about Christianity in future articles — it is a long series. I can understand why it’s not clear at the moment.
