48 - The Prince George Citizen - Friday, April 23, 1993
$9-BILUON WORTH STOCKPILED DURING COLD WAR
Pentagon puts diamonds on auction
by RICK HAMPSON
NEW YORK (AP) — With the Cold War over and budget cutters at the door, the Pentagon is selling its equivalent of the family jewels: a cache of diamonds that was designed to last through a three-year global war.
So, in a variation on swords-to-plowshares, one million carats of the rough, uncut stones once destined for the manufacture of bombers or tanks could dangle from a rock star’s ear or glisten
from a fiancee’s finger.
The diamonds, some of gem or near-gem quality, are part of the National Defence Stockpile, a sort of vast military storage chest. Stashed in warehouses around the country, the stockpile’s 91 strategic metals and other commodities may be worth as much as S9 billion.
Apart from their aesthetic glories, diamonds can be used to make wire for tanks, ships and planes, and to sharpen machine
tools. But the strategic importance of the stockpiled diamonds declined with the development of synthetic diamonds.
The Pentagon has sold diamonds before — $262 million worth in the ’70s and early ’80s — but never so many.
On 47th Street, New York’s diamond district, the June 4 auction has prompted jokes about diamonds being a general’s best friend. But dealers said they take the sale seriously.
Because of declining diamond standards, the value of the military’s unpolished stones has appreciated. Industry estimates of the proceeds range from $50 million to $100 million, but government officials won’t comment because they don’t want to say anything that might hold down bids.
Even S100 million is not a lot of money to the Pentagon — not when a cruiser costs more than $1 billion. The relative pittance that is raised will be used to fix up
military bases around the world.
DeBecrs, the international diamond cartel, will not be among the bidders; it is banned by antitrust laws from doing business in the United States. For that reason, the auction could serve as a good pricing indicator, said Martin Rappaport of the New York Diamond Dealers Club.
“It’s like the Queen goes naked for a day,” he said. “It’s like an outer space shot. You get a real look at the global market without
block
DeBecrs.”
The diamonds are stored in a basement vault at a Citibank branch across from Sl Patrick’s Cathedral.
A dealer must make an appointment, which guarantees up to four days to look at the stones. The jewels are kept in clear glass jars, and weighed before and after each visitor’s inspection. If there’s a discrepancy, said a dealer, “You get down on your hands and knees and start looking.”
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Women’s role in scrolls probed
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At an international conference on the Dead Sea Scrolls, Schuller said preliminary research suggests some evidence that women may have been full members of the community.
In the Damascus document, she noted, there is mention of wives being put to the test for a three-year period, which could be similar to the three-year probationary period for men.
In another document referred to as The Rule of the Congregation, Schuller said women were not on
the list of people excluded from the community by reason of impurity, suggesting that women were considered full members.
In an interview, Schuller emphasized that scholars are still at the initial stages of discovering what the texts say. But she said it is important to be sensitive to the role of women to avoid “back reading” into texts attitudes that presume male dominance.
That type of thinking, she said, goes something like this: Few women are in leadership roles
today, therefore women probably were not in leadership roles in antiquity.
Kraemer said scholars may not find evidence that women were egalitarian participants in Judaism and Christianity in ancient times, but determining their role is still important.
“It reminds us that there were women in antiquity,” she said. “We do sometimes forget that.”
by DAVID BRIGGS The Associated Press
The veil of invisibility that has covered the role of women in biblical times is slowly being lifted.
New scholarship is showing that women played prominent roles in both synagogues and churches during the Greco-Roman period when Christianity and rabbinic Judaism were being developed.
One of the more dramatic examples of shattered stereotypes is developing with new research into the Dead Sea Scrolls, originally thought to be the work of a group of celibate men.
The availability of new texts and scholars exploring feminist readings of the texts suggests not only the presence of women in the community that produced the scrolls, but that they may have been full members.
The discoveries are part of a pattern of expanded research into ancient texts which show that women did more than cook meals and raise children in biblical times, scholars say.
“Wc live in a culture which is still enormously influenced by those texts,” says Rose Kraemer of Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa. “To show that women played major roles in Jewish communities in antiquity undoes centuries of claims women never played those roles and shouldn’t therefore play those roles.”
Kraemer, author of the 1992 book Her Share of Blessings: Women’s Religions Among Pagans, Jews, and Christians in the Greco-Roman World, said there is a growing body of evidence that women held important posts in governing synagogues in Greek-speaking communities during the period.
In Christianity, she said, there is considerable evidence that women played not only leadership roles, but priestly roles in the early Christian church.
Much of the evidence comes from Christian writers who were critical of the practice of women leading churches. But it’s unclear whether those writers who later became accepted by the church were in the mainstream of the Christian Church in the ancient world, said Kraemer.
The Dead Sea Scrolls — the ancient biblical manuscripts and commentaries discovered in caves near the Dead Sea in 1947 — were originally thought to have been written by an ascetic Jewish sect called the Esscncs.
Further research and the publication of new fragments, such as the Cairo Damascus Document, that refer to women and children have raised new questions of the scroll’s authorship and the role of women.
Eileen Schuller of McMastcr University in Hamilton recently called for further study of the role of women reflected in the scrolls.
David Briggs has a master's de gree from Yale Divinity School.
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