THE RHETORIC OF EXTERMINISM Edmund Wilson's Israel and the Dead Sea Scrolls

A renevved interest in the Dead Sea Scrolls drew me back to Edmund Wilson's pioneering study vvhich is stili so often referred to in continuing discussions of the subject. An admirer of Axel's Castle and avvare of the political correctness of the author's Apology to the Iraquoıs, I was not prepared to find a crippling bias in this book. The surprise is increased by the author's disarming truthfulness about his linguistic limitations and his candor about his non-partisan stance. Since he professes himself neither Jew nor Christian, one is prepared to find him free of the biases vvhich have delayed the translation and given rise to opposing theories of dating of the scrolls. Indeed, on the surface, a ration and objective spirit seems to pervade Wilson's discussion of the scrolls themselves. Wilson really does not çare that "ignorant" Catholics might find their traditional faith disturbed by nevv information about the historical Jesus, for example.