Profile: Peter W. Pick

An independent researcher of the Dead Sea Scrolls, Pick has found evidence that contradicts popular theories.

June 21, 2006

Name: Peter W. Pick

Age: 66

Family: Married to Margaret Pick, producer of the Public Radio International show "Riverwalk Jazz." She was also the founding producer of "A Prairie Home Companion."

Occupation: Peter W. Pick is an independent researcher of the Dead Sea Scrolls. He is also a retired dean of Arts & Sciences at Columbia Pacific University and a former archaeologist. Additionally, he is working on a dictionary of Buddhist terms.

Background: Pick grew up in New Jersey and New York. He received his bachelor's degree in art history from Hunter College, and his master's degree in art history from Columbia University. He did advanced graduate work at the University of Michigan and received a doctorate from Columbia Pacific in counseling and holistic health.

Early in his career, Pick worked as an archaeologist and Fulbright scholar doing excavations in Turkey. He also worked at early Arabic sites in Syria and Bronze Age sites in Iran. He also lived in France, where the French government gave him a research grant, and also did work in Sweden and Germany. Pick also founded the museum curation program at San Francisco State in the 1970s.

The Picks have lived in Petaluma since 1988.

What do you enjoy about Petaluma? "The scale of the buildings -- you really don't see anything more than two or three stories, and that really gives it a hometown effect. And my wife likes it because it kind of looks like the Midwest she came from, Minnesota."

For more than a decade, you've been researching the Dead Sea Scrolls with Neil Altman, who is based in Philadelphia. What can you tell us about the scrolls and your research? "The scrolls were found in 1948 in caves by Arab shepherds. They were found in Israel by the Dead Sea. Over a few years, they were collected and a small group of scholars were given the responsibility of translating them. It was kept away from the general academic community under the guise that these scholars hadn't published it all; therefore it was still privileged material. It became sort of like a fiefdom, and only their graduate students could look at it and publish about it."

Your research is leading you to believe that the Dead Sea Scrolls, or at least some of them, did not all come from the time originally proposed, which was 300 B.C., before the birth of Jesus. This is revolutionary? "Journals will not accept articles written about an alternative date for the scrolls. There's a conspiracy. Not only was the material kept away from the public for a long time, there is not an open and free discussion [now].

What has your research shown? "The dating of all of the manuscripts is not pre-Christian, but has medieval, Middle Age indications or signs, everything from numbers to Masoretic vowels [in Hebrew] which only came in the fifth and sixth century, A.D. We're finding a lot of medieval material, whether it's numbers, foreign languages, or Masoretic vowels. That is the most important discovery we've made.

What we're pointing out is that these scrolls traveled, because they had foreign languages on them, and they traveled as far as central Asia, if not China, and had Chinese words on them.

The 800 or so manuscripts, all in relatively fragmentary condition, weren't just written in Hebrew, as Jewish scribes would write them. They had Aramaic in them, and also Greek and Arabic, and a number of other languages. And they were not all sacred texts, but had astrological information and so forth. And the caves, everyone thinks were just across from [the Qumran settlement, upon which the pre-Christianity dating is based]. But there were also caves four miles away that were put under that same rubric, and people still insisted that this was all a homogeneous collection.

Now ideas have come up that this collection was put there to shelter it from the Roman attack of 70 A.D., and the destruction of the Second Temple, a repository, a safe place for texts, supposedly. That's not the accepted theory, that's the new one that finally braved its way, after 40 or 50 years, into the thinking of scholars."

What else have you found? "Well, the fact is, when you look closely at some of the scrolls, you find foreign languages in the margins, that's one extraordinary thing. And the other thing is with the Isaiah scroll, the one most closely identified with Christianity. When you look at the scroll itself, there are two very unusual things, one is that those passages that claim to be prophecies for the coming of Christ have an "X" marking it. And in traditional Jewish scriptures, written by scribes, you don't touch the text, all those words are sacred. You don't mess with the margins. The Isaiah scroll found in the caves had a lot of Xs, which were an alternative way of identifying crosses. So it highlighted the Christian context [evidence that the scrolls were written after Christianity began].

The second part is there are Western numbers written into the text, into the margins between the lines. Western numbers as we know them now were only developed in the 13th and 14th centuries. And then there are Chinese and Persian words, on a small scale, also found on these.

Hobbies: Bird watching at Shollenberger Park with my wife.

How would you describe yourself? A person with curiosity that likes art, likes to go to museums. The art can be ancient as well as modern.

What is your advice to others? Enjoy life.

What is your greatest challenge? Getting this material out to the public?

What was the turning point in your life? Going abroad as an archaeologist, and meeting my wife.

What are your goals? Just having a peaceful life.

What's your favorite book? I'm currently reading "The Secret Book of John."

What is your favorite painting? Any of Clifford Still's work.

If you could change one thing about the world, what would it be? Stop wars.

What's the craziest thing you've ever done? I got married in six weeks with my wife. It would have taken five weeks but it took the relatives a week to get over the shock, I got married at 47.

-- Interviewed by Dane Golden