MONTREAL — Some are calling the exhibit of Dead Sea Scrolls opening at Montreal's Pointe-a-Calliere museum next week an impressive coup. Ho hum. The woman who's overseeing it calls it ''a miracle.''
"I don't know how many times we thought the show wouldn't happen," said project manager Louise Pothier. "We had to overcome so many obstacles."
The road to getting the scrolls to their destination wasn't entirely smooth, the fate of much coming out of the Middle East these days. Authorities from Pointe-à-Callière, a young and relatively low-profile archeology museum in Old Montreal, first got the okay to bring the priceless artifacts to Montreal in 2000.
That was the easy part.
As talks moved apace, the Palestinian intifada broke out that September, causing troubles on the home front in Israel. One year later, terrorists struck the World Trade Center, causing jitters about transporting invaluable artifacts; two U.S. cities with scheduled Dead Sea Scrolls exhibits cancelled their shows.
Montreal persevered. But then it got another jolt as a U.S.-led military coalition sent troops into Iraq. As war raged, organizers wondered whether anxious TV viewers would be interested in venturing out to view delicate sheepskin fragments from a distant past.
"During the war in Iraq, we wondered: If we stage a show, will anyone come?" Pothier asked.
In the end, in a small triumph of ancient culture over current events, the antiquities arrived as scheduled, and were being meticulously uncrated this week under the careful eye of Israeli curators. And this Tuesday, an exhibit of about 100 artifacts including three Dead Sea Scrolls go on view at Pointe-à-Callière, making Pothier's claims of a miracle seem only barely exaggerated.
All three Dead Sea Scrolls have never been exhibited outside Israel before. And these three are considered among the more historic and intact pieces of the famed manuscripts.
"Even some people in Israel were asking, 'Why is this going to Montreal, not the Louvre or the British Museum, or the [Royal Ontario Museum]?' " says Pothier, an archeologist. "You can understand how big a deal it is for any Canadian museum to receive these pieces."
The Dead Sea Scrolls have exerted a pull on the public's imagination ever since a Bedouin shepherd discovered them in 1947 in a cave in the Judean desert, where they had rested in clay jars for 2,000 years.
The Scrolls are the world's oldest extant biblical material. They offer the earliest versions of the Old Testament, and their texts bear a striking resemblance to current-day versions. As such, they offer glimpses of both the development of Judaism and the roots of early Christianity.
It's no wonder their discovery has been called the archeological find of the 20th century.
Still, a show of ancient biblical texts isn't an obvious sell in a secular age, and in a resolutely secular province to boot. And the displays are far from eye candy: Tattered, darkened at the edges, the leather fragments are enticing more for what they represent than how they look.
Yet everywhere the Dead Sea Scrolls go on public display, such as two shows in Chicago and Grand Rapids, Mich., in recent years, they bring sellout crowds.
"It's true, they look like little pieces of burned paper," said Francine Lelièvre, director of the Pointe-à-Callière museum. "But they represent the oldest known biblical text. The Bible remains the most-read book of all time. It's still selling 20 million copies each year, and it's translated into 400 languages. It has marked history, and a large part of the world."
How did an archeology museum that opened only 11 years ago pull off the feat? As often happens in these cases, some fortuitous connections helped.
The scrolls' voyage began three years ago with a meeting between a key Israeli museum official who happened to be born in Winnipeg, and a well-placed Quebec government official who may be one of the few Québécois to speak fluent Yiddish.
After the Pointe-à-Callière museum set its sights on a show of biblical antiquities, it dispatched Pierre Anctil to get the ball rolling. Anctil, who was on loan to Pointe-à-Callière to mount a show on Montreal's fabled St. Laurent Boulevard, is an authority on Montreal Jewish history and has worked on the rapprochement between Jews and French Canadians.
Attending an academic conference in Jerusalem in 2000, he approached Daniel Ben-Natan, a Winnipeg native who is vice-president of the Israel Museum, which houses the Dead Sea Scrolls.
"I told him we want to put on an archeological exhibit at Pointe-à-Callière, and to have an exhibit without the scrolls was unthinkable," recalled Anctil, now head of Quebec's advisory committee on intercultural relations. "The scrolls are the motor that draws the crowds."
The Israel Museum had established a relationship with Pointe-à-Callière five years ago when the Montreal museum borrowed a piece for an exhibit on crucifixion. So when Anctil made his approach about the current show, he was given the greenlight on the spot, and negotiations began the following January about the specific pieces.
Initially, however, some Israelis, who regard the pieces as among their most important patrimonial assets, were skeptical about the Canadians' intentions.
"I didn't take them seriously," said Michal Dayagi-Mendels, senior curator of archeology at the Israel Museum, who was in Montreal this week. "I have dreamers come to me over the years, and they're not realistic either about the story, or the expenses involved."
Pointe-à-Callière set out to prove them wrong. They got financial backing from several donors, including Charles and Andrea Bronfman, and Montreal businessman Stephen Bronfman. The Quebec government pitched in, and Ottawa provided crucial liability coverage through Canadian Heritage. (Lelièvre pegged the cost of the exhibit at less than $1-million, about the same price borne by the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Greater Ottawa, where it goes later this year.)
Ultimately, Israeli authorities also recognized the public-relations value in sharing the precious artifacts.
"After Sept. 11, letting them leave Israel was extremely brave," Dayagi-Mendels said. "But we felt we wanted to share them with the rest of the world. We felt these are diplomats of Israel. We want people to understand that Israel is not just about nasty politics, but a lot more than that. And [the scrolls] can say a lot more about Israel in a more positive and cultural way. These are the roots of Western culture that lie here."
The exhibit, called Archaeology and the Bible: From King David to the Dead Sea Scrolls, features other rare artifacts. One is the ossuary of Joseph Caiaphas, the high priest who handed Jesus to Pontius Pilate for his execution; another is a stone block, or stele, dating to the ninth century BC, the oldest known object to refer to the royal lineage of King David.
But the museum expects the crowds to show up for the Dead Sea Scrolls, tattered but powerful voices from the past.
"We hope we can touch people," Pothier said. "Sure, our generation doesn't read the Bible any more. We don't go to Sunday Mass. But everyone knows what the Bible is. We want to tell a story, and the historic foundations of that story."
Archaeology and the Bible: From King David to the Dead Sea Scrolls opens Tuesday at the Montreal Museum of Archaeology and History at Pointe-à-Callière, and runs until Nov. 2. The exhibit moves to the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Gatineau, Que., from Dec. 5 to April 12, 2004.
