Archbishop Mar Athanasius Yeshue Samuel
I
have been given such grace in life to meet and speak, to people of great achievement
and great grace … one such man was Metropolitan Athanasius Yeshue
Samuel … a brief history of him follows
Metropolitan
Athanasius
Yeshue
Samuel (1909–1995), more often referred to as Mar Samuel, was a Metropolitan
and Archbishop of the Syriac Orthodox Church of Antioch, as well as a central
figure in the discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls.
Archbishop Mar Athanasius Yeshue Samuel, the primate of
the Syrian Orthodox Church of the United States and the man who obtained the
first of the 2,000-year-old Dead Sea Scrolls and brought them to world
attention, he died at his residence in Lodi, N.J. He was 87.
Archbishop Samuel, a native of Syria, was the bishop, or
metropolitan, of Jerusalem in 1947 when a cobbler he knew in Bethlehem brought
him seven pieces of ancient leather he had received from Bedouin shepherds.
They had discovered the leather while searching for a lost goat in a cave near
the Dead Sea and
The cobbler, noticing that
writing appeared on the skins when they were accidentally splashed with water,
took them to the bishop. He recognized the writing as Aramaic but could not
decipher what scholars later determined to be religious texts dating to 200
B.C.
It was through further inquiries the bishop made in Jerusalem
and elsewhere that word of the discovery and its scholarly implications slowly
became known and led to the discovery of some 800 other scrolls.
But partly because of the
turmoil surrounding the creation of the state of Israel, the bishop still had
the scrolls when he came to West New York, N.J, in 1949, initially to collect
money for victims of the war in Palestine and eventually as the spiritual
leader of the fledgling United States diocese of his church.
In 1954, after placing an ad in The Wall Street Journal,
Archbishop Samuel sold the scrolls for $250,000 to an intermediary acting for
Israel. They are housed in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.
The above is just a brief description
of the historical importance of the Dead Sea scrolls and Metropolitan Athanasius
Yeshue
Samuel role in being one of the first religious to lay eyes on them …
I had the
privilege and honor to meet and speak to Archbishop Samuel … in Lodi, NJ about two years
prior to his death .. what an honor and what a nice man he was … and he “glowed”
I know that sounds strange to some, but the Metropolitan had an inner glow that
radiated like an inner light was shining out of him, when he spoke of the Dead
Seas Scrolls to me …
I kept peppering him with questions … what did they look …
what language were they in …. What did they say …? Archbishop Samuel took the
time to answer all my questions and seemed delighted to do so….
He spoke about
Noah and his wife and how they argued over their sons … so cool!!! Noah and his wife cutting it up … just like a
real couple do at times!!!! Nothing
magical there just an ordinary family called to do an extraordinary thing!
The next story Archbishop Samuel told me about was the
scroll, in which Abraham described his wife Sara and how beautiful she was to
him … in great detail Abraham described Sara, from the top of her head to her
feet! … Very pretty almost like a
romance novel!
WOW!!! That Abraham dude
was a romantic guy … was my response to Archbishop Samuel after he told me the
story … Archbishop Samuel laughed and said … “I guess Abraham was a romantic”…
I will never forget Archbishop Samuel and the grace to
hear from him first hand … Biblical history being made with the discovery of the
Dead Sea Scrolls … and to learn how “normal” the people who God used in ancient
times were … and romantic!!!
