Una recente biografia di Milik e i ‘misteri’ di Qumran

This review article presents and critically discusses the book by Zdzisław J. Kapera and Robert Feather, Doyen of the Dead Sea Scrolls. An in depth biography of Józef Tadeusz Milik (1922-2006), published in 2011 by The Enigma Press. It is “a twin book”, written by two authors who shed light from different perspectives the life and work of renown Polish epigraphist and paleographist Józef Tadeusz (Joseph Thaddée) Milik. The biography proper, with abundant notes at the bottom of each page, is the work of Z.J. Kapera, while the other author, a journalist and metallurgist-engineer R. Feather, proposes to uncover various less noted aspects of Milik that emerge from a series of interviews and private conversations with him and those close to him. This second contribution proves to be very disappointing in terms of content and deficient from the point of methodological terms. Indeed, Feather, who is fascinated by mysteries especially those of Qumran, skillfully exploits the “unpublished thoughts” of Milik, which Feather attributes an absolute value and which forms the foundation of his fantastical and baseless hypotheses and conjectures.