What’s in a word? It’s a scholarly puzzle.

— Neil Altman

Posted on Saturday, June 3, 2006

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It would take more than 60 years after discovery to learn the meaning and dating of a Persian word written in Hebrew letters on the Qumran War Scroll and, later, also found on the “Son of G-d Text.” In researching this Persian word (spelled nun, het, shin, yod, resh in Hebrew ) in the summer of 2005, Near East archaeologist Peter Pick contacted Ammon Netzer, professor of Iranian Studies at Hebrew University, who said that the word means “prey or act of catching prey.” When I interviewed Netzer in August 2005, he confirmed the meaning, but also dated this word on the War Scroll as “... no earlier than third or fourth century A. D.... as a Middle Persian word.” He dates this same word with its unique ending on the “Son of G-d Text” from “600 to 900 A. D.” and as “early new Persian.” In 1958, an article by Abraham Poliak in Jewish Quarterly Review revealed that he had found on this same War Scroll another foreign word, “togar,” meaning “Turk.” He tells us, “We cannot explain how the word ‘togar’ [referring to a people ] appeared in the scroll unless we assume that it was composed in a very late [medieval ] period.” In addition, several foreign words or theologically foreign concepts have been found on the Isaiah Scroll, such as the Christian phrase, “Mother of G-d.” In a May 12, 2005, scholarly report, Dead Sea Scroll researcher Fred Miller confirmed my discovery, as had Yiddish scholars previously, of the word “shul,” which does not exist before the medieval period. Shul, which means “synagogue” in Yiddish, appears between the lines on the Isaiah Scroll.

It has also been discovered that the calligraphy on the first letter of the word “shul” uniquely matches a late medieval text found in China.

There is also a possibility of another foreign word that would point to the Khazars, a people who had the largest Jewish empire the world has ever known, stretching across five former Soviet republics. They founded Kiev in the 10 th century and were Turks, who were initially from Chinese Central Asia and originally wrote in runic script. This may explain why there are traces of runic script on the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Also, the Chinese and Hebrew on the Dead Sea Scrolls were written poorly, as if they were the second language of the writers of the scrolls. Hebrew, Chinese and Persian were second languages to the Khazars, because they spoke a Turkic tongue.

As they migrated west into countries such as Romania, Germany and Spain during the 12 th and 13 th centuries, the Khazars adopted Yiddish as another spoken language. The Khazars may also have migrated east into China, where it has been proved, from artifacts found near the Caspian Sea, that they had extensive commercial dealings with the Chinese, because there was a major trade route between Europe and China going right through Khazaria.

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