Journey into History

On March 14, 1958, I had the privilege of standing in Cave Four at Qumran, where most of the Dead Sea Scrolls were found. (The location is misspelled on the picture at the top of this post.) I was barely seven years old at the time, so I didn’t understand it’s significance then. And although the archeologists and Jewish and Biblical scholars of the time knew the Dead Sea Scrolls were an important discovery, most of the work on the scrolls came later, so even they probably didn’t know how big a find it was. If they had, would they have let a family with three children visit it?

Qumran was in Jordan at the time, and, according to a March 17, 1958 letter from my mother to her parents, “We had to go through an army camp to get there and had permission from the Jordanian Department of Antiquities for this purpose.” I don’t know how Daddy obtained permission, but I’m not surprised that he did. He taught at the Bishop’s School in Amman, Jordan in 1946 and 47 and was teaching there again during our sojourn in 1957–58. Many of the Bishop’s School’s students went on to hold influential governmental positions, so one of them may have secured the pass. In any event, Daddy was both shrewd and determined, and he knew how to get permission to visit the places he wanted to see.

Why am I thinking about this now? I just began listening to a series of Great Courses lectures on the Dead Sea Scrolls, which are taught by Dr. Gary Rendsburg. And it struck me again how much I owe Daddy for immersing me in history.

When I was a child, I didn’t realize how fortunate I was to be my father’s daughter. Daddy loved his family and could be very generous in the right circumstances, but he was also thrifty and strict and too much of a scholar for my tastes. Now, of course, I see things differently. We traveled the world because he loved traveling and learning, but he also because he wanted his children to have those experiences.

And I’m grateful.

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The picture at the top of this page is from a color slide taken by my father, Oliver S. Page, in 1958. The caption was added by my mother many years later when she had the slide turned into a print. Unfortunately, the digitized version looks better in black and white.