The most curious item in the excruciatingly lengthy yet revealing copy-paste below, is that officially, the excavation of Cave 1 BEGAN from
15 Feb-5 March 1949 or AFTER the founding of the State of Israel in 1948 ! This also puts the entire, complicated story of Dr. John C. Trever of how the Dead Sea Scrolls were originally discovered into serious question...
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Copy-pastes from Wikipedia; note the ELABORATE nature of the entire story behind the Dead Sea Scrolls:
The
Dead Sea Scrolls are a collection of about 900 documents, including texts from the
Hebrew Bible, discovered between 1947 and 1956 in eleven
caves in and around the ruins of the ancient settlement of
Khirbet Qumran on the northwest shore of the
Dead Sea in the
West Bank. The texts are of great religious and historical significance, as they include the oldest known surviving copies of Biblical and extra-biblical documents and preserve evidence of great diversity in late
Second Temple Judaism. They are written in
Hebrew,
Aramaic and
Greek, mostly on
parchment, but with some written on
papyrus. These manuscripts generally date between 150 BCE and 70 CE. The scrolls are traditionally identified with the ancient
Jewish sect called the
Essenes, though some recent interpretations have challenged this association and argue that the scrolls were penned by priests in
Jerusalem,
Zadokites, or other unknown Jewish groups.
The Dead Sea Scrolls are traditionally divided into three groups: "Biblical" manuscripts (copies of texts from the
Hebrew Bible), which comprise roughly 40% of the identified scrolls; "
Apocryphal" or "
Pseudepigraphical" manuscripts (known documents from the Second Temple Period like
Enoch,
Jubilees,
Tobit,
Sirach, non-canonical psalms, etc., that were not ultimately
canonized in the
Hebrew Bible), which comprise roughly 30% of the identified scrolls; and "Sectarian" manuscripts (previously unknown documents that speak to the rules and beliefs of a particular group or groups within greater
Judaism) like the
Community Rule,
War Scroll,
Pesher (Hebrew
pesher פשר = "Commentary")
on Habakkuk, and the
Rule of the Blessing, which comprise roughly 30% of the identified scrolls.
The settlement of Qumran is one kilometer inland from the northwest shore of the Dead Sea. The scrolls were found in eleven caves nearby, between 125 meters (e.g., Cave 4) and one kilometer (e.g., Cave 1) away. None were found within the settlement, unless it originally encompassed the caves. In the winter of 1946–47, Palestinian
Muhammed edh-Dhib and his cousin discovered the caves, and soon afterwards the scrolls.
John C. Trever reconstructed the story of the scrolls from several interviews with the
Bedouin. edh-Dhib's cousin noticed the caves, but edh-Dhib himself was the first to actually fall into one. He retrieved a handful of scrolls, which Trever identifies as the
Isaiah Scroll, Habakkuk Commentary, and the Community Rule (originally known as "Manual of Discipline"), and took them back to the camp to show to his family. None of the scrolls were destroyed in this process, despite popular rumor.
[6] The Bedouin kept the scrolls hanging on a tent pole while they figured out what to do with them, periodically taking them out to show people. At some point during this time, the Community Rule was split in two.
The Bedouin first took the scrolls to a dealer named Ibrahim 'Ijha in
Bethlehem. 'Ijha returned them, saying they were worthless, after being warned that they may have been stolen from a synagogue. Undaunted, the Bedouin went to a nearby market, where a Syrian Christian offered to buy them. A sheikh joined their conversation and suggested they take the scrolls to Khalil Eskander Shahin, "Kando", a cobbler and part-time antiques dealer. The Bedouin and the dealers returned to the site, leaving one scroll with Kando and selling three others to a dealer for £7 GBP ($29 in 2003 US dollars).
[6]
Arrangements with the Bedouin left the scrolls in the hands of a third party until a profitable sale of them could be negotiated. That third party, George Isha'ya, was a member of the
Syrian Orthodox Church, who soon contacted
St. Mark's Monastery in the hope of getting an appraisal of the nature of the texts. News of the find then reached
Metropolitan Athanasius Yeshue Samuel, better known as
Mar Samuel.
After examining the scrolls and suspecting their antiquity, Mar Samuel expressed an interest in purchasing them. Four scrolls found their way into his hands: the now famous
Isaiah Scroll (
1QIsa), the
Community Rule, the
Habakkuk Pesher (a commentary on the book of
Habakkuk), and the
Genesis Apocryphon. More scrolls soon surfaced in the antiquities market, and Professor
Eleazer Sukenik and Professor
Benjamin Mazar, Israeli archaeologists at Hebrew University, soon found themselves in possession of three,
The War Scroll,
Thanksgiving Hymns, and another, more fragmented, Isaiah scroll.
By the end of 1947, Sukenik and Mazar received word of the scrolls in Mar Samuel's possession and attempted to purchase them. No deal was reached, and instead the scrolls caught the attention of Dr. John C. Trever, of the
American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR), who compared the script in the scrolls to that of
The Nash Papyrus, the oldest biblical manuscript then known, and found similarities between them.
Dr. Trever, a keen amateur photographer, met with Mar Samuel on February 21, 1948, when he photographed the scrolls. The quality of his photographs often exceeded the visibility of the scrolls themselves over the years, as the ink of the texts quickly deteriorated after they were removed from their linen wrappings.
Ad for "Dead Sea Scrolls" in the Wall Street JournalThe scrolls were analyzed using a
cyclotron at the
University of California,
Davis where it was found that the black ink used was
iron-gall ink.
[7] The red ink on the scrolls was
cinnabar (HgS, mercury sulfide).
[7]
In March, the
1948 Arab-Israeli War prompted the removal of the scrolls for safekeeping, from Israel to Beirut, Lebanon.
Early in September, 1948, Mar brought Professor
Ovid R. Sellers, the new Director of ASOR, some additional scroll fragments that he had acquired. By the end of 1948, nearly two years after their discovery, scholars had yet to locate the cave where the fragments had been found. With unrest in the country at that time, no large-scale search could be undertaken. Sellers attempted to get the Syrians to help him locate the cave, but they demanded more money than he could offer. Finally, Cave 1 was discovered, on January 28, 1949, by a United Nations observer.
The Dead Sea Scrolls went up for sale eventually, in an advertisement in the June 1, 1954
Wall Street Journal.
On July 1, the scrolls, after delicate negotiations and accompanied by three people including the Metropolitan, arrived at the
Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in
New York. They were purchased by Prof. Mazar and the son of Prof. Sukenik,
Yigael Yadin, for US$250,000 and brought back to East Jerusalem, where they were on display at the Palestine Archaeological Museum then, after the Six-Day War, to West Jerusalem at the Shrine of the Book.
Survey of the Caves
The caves surrounding Qumran are numbered based upon the order of their discovery and their production of scrolls and scroll fragments. Thus, caves 7-9 and 4 are very close to the settlement at Qumran, while caves 1, 3, and 11 are farther away. Likewise, there are hundreds of other caves surrounding Qumran discovered both before and after the 11 scroll caves that did not produce scrolls and are therefore not numbered as scroll caves. Below is a summary of each of the
Qumran Caves:
Cave 1
Cave 1 was discovered in the winter or spring of 1947. It was first excavated by Gerald Lankester Harding and Roland de Vaux from Feb 15 to Mar 5, 1949. In addition to the original seven scrolls, Cave 1 produced jars and bowls, whose chemical composition and shape matched vessels discovered at the settlement at Qumran, pieces of cloth, and additional fragments that matched portions of the original scrolls, thereby confirming that the original scrolls came from Cave 1.
The original seven scrolls from Cave 1 are:
Cave 2
Cave two was discovered in February, 1952.
[10] It yielded 300 fragments from 33 manuscripts, including
Jubilees and the
Book of Sirach in the original
Hebrew.
Cave 3
Cave three was discovered on March 14, 1952.
[10] The cave yielded 14 manuscripts including
Jubilees and the curious
Copper Scroll, which lists 67 hiding places, mostly underground, throughout the ancient Roman province of Judea (now Israel). According to the scroll, the secret caches held astonishing amounts of gold, silver, copper, aromatics, and manuscripts.
Cave 4
Cave four was discovered in August, 1952, and was excavated from September 22 to 29, 1952 by Gerald Lankester Harding,
Roland de Vaux, and
Józef Milik.
[11] Cave four is actually two, hand-cut caves (4a and 4b), but since the fragments were mixed, they are labeled as 4Q. Cave 4 is the most famous of
Qumran caves both because of its visibility from the Qumran plateau and its productivity. It is visible from the plateau to the south of the
Qumran settlement. It is by far the most productive of all Qumran caves, producing ninety percent of the Dead Sea Scrolls and scroll fragments (approx. 15,000 fragments from 500 different texts), including 9-10 copies of
Jubilees, along with 21
tefillin and 7
mezuzot.
Caves 5 and 6
Caves 5 and 6 were discovered in 1952, shortly after Cave 4. Cave 5 produced approximately 25 manuscripts, while Cave 6 contained fragments of about 31 manuscripts.
[11]
Caves 7–9
Caves 7-9 are unique in that they are the only caves that are accessible only by passing through the settlement at Qumran. Carved into the southern end of the Qumran plateau, archaeologists excavated caves 7-9 in 1957, but did not find many fragments perhaps due to high levels of erosion that left only the shallow bottoms of the caves.
Cave 7 yielded fewer than 20 fragments of Greek documents, including 7Q2 (the "
Letter of Jeremiah" =
Baruch 6),
7Q5 (which became the subject of much speculation in later decades), and a Greek copy of a scroll of Enoch.
[12][13][14] Cave 7 also produced several inscribed potsherds and jars.
[15]
Cave 8 produced five fragments: Genesis (8QGen), Psalms (8QPs), a
tefillin fragment (8QPhyl), a
mezuzah (8QMez), and a hymn (8QHymn).
[16] Cave 8 also produced several tefillin cases, a box of leather objects, lamps, jars, and the sole of a leather shoe.
[15]
Cave 9 produced only small, unidentifiable fragments.
Caves 8 and 9 also yielded several date pits
[15] similar to those discovered by Magen and Peleg to the west of Locus 75 during their "Operation Scroll" excavations.
[17][18]
Cave 10
Cave 10 produced only a single
ostracon with some writing on it.
Cave 11
Cave 11 was discovered in 1956 and yielded 21 texts, some of which were quite lengthy. The
Temple Scroll, so called because more than half of it pertains to the construction of the
Temple of Jerusalem, was found in Cave 11, and is by far the longest scroll. It is now 26.7 feet (8.15m) long. Its original length may have been over 28 feet (8.75m).
The Temple Scroll was regarded by
Yigael Yadin as "The Torah According to the
Essenes." On the other hand, Hartmut Stegemann, a contemporary and friend of Yadin, believed the scroll was not to be regarded as such, but was a document without exceptional significance. Stegemann notes that it is not mentioned or cited in any known Essene writing.
[19]
Also in Cave 11, an
escatological fragment about the biblical figure
Melchizedek (
11Q13) was found. Cave 11 also produced a copy of
Jubilees.
According to former chief editor of the DSS editorial team,
John Strugnell, there are at least four privately owned scrolls from Cave 11, that have not yet been made available for scholars. Among them is a complete
Aramaic manuscript of the Book of Enoch.
[20]
Survey of Scrolls
While many of the Dead Sea Scrolls are small fragments of Biblical, apocryphal, or sectarian manuscripts, some of the scrolls have come to be well known and influential to Third Temple (Herod's Temple) Judaism. The following is a list of the Dead Sea Scrolls from the
caves near Qumran:
Scrolls from Cave 1
Scrolls from Cave 2
Scrolls from Cave 3
- 3QEzek ("Ezekiel" 16:31-33) = 3Q1
- 3QPs ("Psalms" 2:6-7) = 3Q2
- 3QLam ("Lamentations") = 3Q3
- 3QpIsa ("Pesher on Isaiah") = 3Q4
- 3QJub ("Jubilees") = 3Q5
- 3QHymn (an unidentified hymn) = 3Q6
- 3QTJudah? ("Testament of Judah"?) = 3Q7 cf. 4Q484, 4Q538
- 3Q8 (fragment of an unidentified text)
- 3Q9 (possible unidentified sectarian text)
- 3Q10-11 (unclassified fragments)
- 3Q12-13 (unclassified Aramaic fragments)
- 3Q14 (unclassified fragments)
- 3QCopper Scroll ("The Copper Scroll") = 3Q15
Scrolls from Cave 4
Scrolls from Cave 5
- 5QDeut ("Deuteronomy") = 5Q1
- 5QKgs ("1 Kings") = 5Q2
- 5QIsa ("Isaiah") = 5Q3
- 5QAmos ("Amos") = 5Q4
- 5QPs ("Psalms") = 5Q5
- 5QLama ("Lamentations") = 5Q6
- 5QLamb ("Lamentations") = 5Q7
- 5QPhyl (3 fragments from a "Phylactery") = 5Q8
- 5QapJosh ("Apocryphon of Joshua") = 5Q9
- 5Q10 Apocryphon of Malachi
- 5Q11 Rule of the Community
- 5Q12 Damascus Document
- 5Q13 Rule
- 5Q14 Curses
- 5Q15 New Jerusalem
- 5Q16-25 unclassified
- 5QX1 Leather fragment
Scrolls from Cave 6
- 6QpaleoGen (section of "Genesis" 6:13-21 written in palaeo-Hebrew script) = 6Q1
- 6QpaleoLev (section of "Leviticus" 8:12-13 written in palaeo-Hebrew script) = 6Q2
- 6Q3 Deuteronomy
- 6Q4 Kings
- 6QCant ("Canticles" or "Song of Songs") = 6Q6
- 6Q7 Daniel
- 6QpapEnGiants ("Book of Giants" from "Enoch") = 6Q8
- 6Qpap apSam-Kgs ("Apocryphon on Samuel-Kings") = 6Q9
- 6QpapProph (an unidentified prophetic fragment) = 6Q10
- 6Q11 ("Allegory of the Vine")
- 6QapocProph (an apocryphal prophecy) = 6Q12
- 6QPriestProph ("Priestly Prophecy") = 6Q13
- 6QD ("Damascus Document") = 6Q15
- 6QpapBened ("Benediction") = 6Q16
- 6Q17 Calendrical Document
- 6Q18 Hymn
- 6Q19 Genesis
- 6Q20 Deuteronomy
- 6Q21 Prophetic text?
- 6Q22-6QX2 Unclassified
Scrolls from Cave 7
Scrolls from Cave 8
- 8QGen ("Genesis") = 8Q1
- 8QPs ("Psalms") = 8Q2
- 8QPhyl (fragments from a "Phylactery") = 8Q3
- 8QMez (portion of "Deuteronomy" 10:12-11:21 from a Mezuzah) = 8Q4
- 8QHymn (a previously unidentified hymn) = 8Q5
- 8QX1 Tabs
- 8QX2-3 Thongs
Scrolls from Cave 9
- 9Qpap (unidentified fragment)
Scrolls from Cave 10
Scrolls from Cave 11
Significance to the Canon of the Bible
The significance of the scrolls relates in a large part to the field of textual criticism and how accurately the Bible has been transcribed over time. Before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the oldest Hebrew manuscripts of the Bible were Masoretic texts dating to 10th century CE such as the Aleppo Codex. The biblical manuscripts found among the Dead Sea Scrolls push that date back a millennium to the 2nd century BCE. Before this discovery, the earliest extant manuscripts of the Old Testament were in Greek in manuscripts such as Codex Vaticanus Graecus 1209 and Codex Sinaiticus.
According to The Oxford Companion to Archaeology:
The biblical manuscripts from Qumran, which include at least fragments from every book of the Old Testament, except perhaps for the Book of Esther, provide a far older cross section of scriptural tradition than that available to scholars before. While some of the Qumran biblical manuscripts are nearly identical to the Masoretic, or traditional, Hebrew text of the Old Testament, some manuscripts of the books of Exodus and Samuel found in Cave Four exhibit dramatic differences in both language and content. In their astonishing range of textual variants, the Qumran biblical discoveries have prompted scholars to reconsider the once-accepted theories of the development of the modern biblical text from only three manuscript families: of the Masoretic text, of the Hebrew original of the Septuagint, and of the Samaritan Pentateuch. It is now becoming increasingly clear that the Old Testament scripture was extremely fluid until its canonization around A.D. 100.[21]
About 35% of the DSS biblical manuscripts belong to the Masoretic tradition (MT), 5% to the Septuagint family, and 5% to the Samaritan, with the remainder unaligned. The non-aligned fall into two categories, those inconsistent in agreeing with other known types, and those that diverge significantly from all other known readings. The DSS thus form a significant witness to the mutability of biblical texts at this period.[22] The sectarian texts among the Dead Sea Scrolls, most of which were previously unknown, offer new light on one form of Judaism practiced during the Third/Herod Temple period.
Frequency of books found
Books Ranked According to Number of Manuscripts found (top 16)
Books
No. found
Psalms39
Deuteronomy33
1 Enoch25
Genesis24
Isaiah22
Jubilees21
Exodus18
Leviticus17
Numbers11
Minor Prophets10
Daniel8
Jeremiah6
Ezekiel6
Job6
1 & 2 Samuel4
Origin of the Scrolls
There has been much debate about the origin of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The dominant theory remains that the scrolls were the product of a sect of Jews living at nearby Qumran called the Essenes, but this theory has come to be challenged by several modern scholars. The various theories concerning the origin of the scrolls are as follows:
Qumran-Essene Theory
The prevalent view among scholars, almost universally held until the 1990s, is the "Qumran-Essene" hypothesis originally posited by
Roland Guérin de Vaux[24] and
Józef Tadeusz Milik,
[25] though independently both
Eliezer Sukenik and Butrus Sowmy of St Mark's Monastery connected scrolls with the Essenes well before any excavations at Qumran.
[26] The Qumran-Essene theory holds that the scrolls were written by the
Essenes, or perhaps by another Jewish sectarian group, residing at
Khirbet Qumran. They composed the scrolls and ultimately hid them in the nearby caves during the
Jewish Revolt sometime between 66 and 68 AD. The site of Qumran was destroyed and the scrolls were never recovered by those that placed them there. A number of arguments are used to support this theory.
- There are striking similarities between the description of an initiation ceremony of new members in the Community Rule and descriptions of the Essene initiation ceremony mentioned in the works of Flavius Josephus' (a Jewish-Roman historian of the time) account of the Second Temple Period.
- Josephus mentions the Essenes as sharing property among the members of the community, as does the Community Rule.
- During the excavation of Khirbet Qumran, two inkwells and plastered elements thought to be tables were found, offering evidence that some form of writing was done there. More inkwells were discovered in nearby loci. De Vaux called this area the "scriptorium" based upon this discovery.
- Several Jewish ritual baths (Hebrew: miqvah = מקוה) were discovered at Qumran, which offers evidence of an observant Jewish presence at the site.
- Pliny the Elder (a geographer writing after the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD) describes a group of Essenes living in a desert community on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea near the ruined town of 'Ein Gedi.
The Qumran-Essene theory has been the dominant theory since its initial proposal by
Roland de Vaux and
J.T. Milik. Recently, however, several other scholars have proposed alternative origins of the scrolls.
Qumran-Sectarian Theory
Qumran-Sectarian theories are variations on the Qumran-Essene theory. The main point of departure from the Qumran-Essene theory is hesitation to link the Dead sea Scrolls specifically with the
Essenes. Most proponents of the Qumran-Sectarian theory understand a group of Jews living in or near
Qumran to be responsible for the Dead Sea Scrolls, but do not necessarily conclude that the sectarians are
Essenes.
Qumran-Sadducean Theory
A specific variation on the Qumran-Sectarian theory that has gained much recent popularity, is the work of
Lawrence H. Schiffman who proposes that the community was led by a group of Zadokite priests (
Sadducees). The most important document in support of this view is the "
Miqsat Ma'ase Ha-Torah" (
4QMMT), which cites purity laws (such as the transfer of impurities) identical to those attributed in rabbinic writings to the Sadducees.
4QMMT also reproduces a festival calendar that follows
Sadducee principles for the dating of certain festival days.
Christian Origin Theory
While there are certainly some common characteristics shared between different Jewish sectarian groups, most scholars deny that there is any connection between the
Christians and the authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Still,
Spanish Jesuit Josep O'Callaghan-Martínez has argued that one fragment (
7Q5) preserves a portion of text from the
New Testament Gospel of Mark 6:52-53.
[28] In recent years,
Robert Eisenman has advanced the theory that some scrolls actually describe the early
Christian community. Eisenman also attempted to relate the career of
James the Just and
the Apostle Paul /
Saul of Tarsus to some of these documents.
Jerusalem Origin Theory
Some scholars have argued that the scrolls were the product of
Jews living in
Jerusalem, who hid the scrolls in the caves near
Qumran while fleeing from the
Romans during the destruction of
Jerusalem in 70 AD. Karl Heinrich Rengstorf first proposed that the Dead Sea Scrolls originated at the library of the
Jewish Temple in Jerusalem.
[30] Later,
Norman Golb suggested that the scrolls were the product of multiple libraries in Jerusalem, and not necessarily the
Jerusalem Temple library.
[4][31] Proponents of the Jerusalem Origin theory point to the diversity of thought and handwriting among the scrolls as evidence against a Qumran origin of the scrolls. Several archaeologists have also accepted an origin of the scrolls other than
Qumran, including
Yizhar Hirschfeld[32] and most recently Yizhak Magen and Yuval Peleg,
[33] who all understand the remains of
Qumran to be those of a
Hasmonean fort that was reused during later periods.
Publication
Some of the documents were published early. All the writings in Cave 1 appeared in print between 1950 and 1956, those from eight other caves were released in 1963, and 1965 saw the publication of the
Psalms Scroll from Cave 11. Their translations into English soon followed.
Although heralded as one of the great events in modern archaeology, the discovery of the scrolls is not without controversy. All the manuscripts were initially placed under the oversight of a committee of scholars appointed by the
Jordanian Department of Antiquities. This responsibility was assumed by the
Israel Antiquities Authority after 1967.
[34]
Prior to 1968, most of the known scrolls and fragments were housed in the
Rockefeller Museum (formerly known as the Palestine Archaeological Museum) in
Jerusalem. After the
Six Day War, these scrolls and fragments were moved to the
Shrine of the Book, at the
Israel Museum.
Publication of the scrolls has taken many decades, and the delay has been a source of academic controversy. As of 2007 two volumes remain to be completed, with the whole series,
Discoveries in the Judean Desert, running to thirty-nine volumes in total. Many of the scrolls are now housed in the
Shrine of the Book in
Jerusalem, while others are housed in the
University of Chicago's
Oriental Institute,
Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary,
Princeton Theological Seminary,
Azusa Pacific University (all of which are located in the U.S.A.), and in the hands of private collectors.
Most of the longer, more complete scrolls were published soon after their discovery. The majority of the scrolls, however, consists of tiny, brittle fragments, which were published at a pace considered by many to be excessively slow. Even more unsettling for some was the fact that access to the unpublished documents was severely limited to the editorial committee. In 1991, researchers at
Hebrew Union College in
Cincinnati, Ohio, announced the creation of a computer program that used previously published scrolls to reconstruct the unpublished texts. Officials at the
Huntington Library in
San Marino, California, announced that they would allow researchers unrestricted access to the library's complete set of photographs of the scrolls. With their monopoly broken, the officials of the Israel Antiquities Authority agreed to lift their long-standing restrictions on the use of the scrolls.
[34]
Ben Zion Wacholder's publication in the fall of 1991 of reconstructed 17 documents from a concordance that had been made in 1988 and had come into the hands of scholars outside of the International Team; in the same month, there occurred the discovery and publication of a complete set of facsimiles of the Cave 4 materials at the Huntington Library, which were not covered by the "secrecy rule".
After further delays, public interest attorney
William John Cox undertook representation of an "undisclosed client," who had provided a complete set of the unpublished photographs, and contracted for their publication. Professors
Robert Eisenman and
James Robinson indexed the photographs and wrote an introduction to
A Facsimile Edition of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which was published by the Biblical Archaeology Society in 1991.
[35] As a result, the "secrecy rule" was lifted.
Following the publication of the Facsimile Edition, Professor Elisha Qimron sued Hershel Shanks, Eisenman, Robinson and the Biblical Archaeology Society for copyright infringement of one of the scrolls, which he deciphered (MMT). The District Court of Jerusalem found in favor of Qimron in September 1993.
[36] The Court issued a restraining order, which prohibited the publication of the deciphered text, and ordered defendants to pay Qimron NIS 100,000 for infringing his copyright and the right of attribution. Defendants appealed the Supreme Court of Israel, which approved the District Court's decision, in August 2000. The Supreme Court further ordered that the defendants hand over to Qimron all the infringing copied.
[37] The decision met Israeli and international criticism from copyright law scholars.
[38]
Publication accelerated with the appointment of the respected Dutch-Israeli textual scholar
Emanuel Tov as editor-in-chief in 1990. Publication of the Cave 4 documents soon commenced, with five volumes in print by 1995. As of March 2009 volume XXXII remains to be completed, with the whole series,
Discoveries in the Judean Desert, running to thirty nine volumes in total.
In December 2007, the Dead Sea Scrolls Foundation commissioned London publisher Facsimile Editions to publish exact facsimiles
[39] of three scrolls,
[40] The Great Isaiah Scroll (
1QIsa),
The Order of the Community (
1QS), and
The Pesher to Habakkuk (
1QpHab). Of the first three facsimile sets, one was exhibited at the
Early Christianity and the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition in Seoul, South Korea, and a second set was purchased by the British Library in London. A further 25 sets including facsimiles of fragments 4Q175 (Testimonia), 4Q162 (Pesher Isaiah
b) and 4Q109 (Qohelet) were announced in May 2009.
Digital copies
High-resolution images of all the Dead Sea scrolls are now available online, and can easily be found with a Web search. They can also be purchased in inexpensive multi-volumes - on disc media or in book form - or viewed in certain college and university libraries.
According to
Computer Weekly (16th Nov 2007), a team from
King's College London is to advise the
Israel Antiquities Authority, who are planning to digitize the scrolls. On 27th Aug 2008 an Israeli internet news agency YNET announced that the project is under way.
[41] The scrolls are planned to be made available to the public via Internet. The project is to include infra-red scanning of the scrolls which is said to expose additional details not revealed under visible light.
The text of nearly all of the non-biblical scrolls has been recorded and tagged for morphology by Dr. Martin Abegg, Jr., the Ben Zion Wacholder Professor of Dead Sea Scroll Studies at
Trinity Western University in Langley, BC, Canada. It is available on handheld devices through
Olive Tree Bible Software - BibleReader, on Macs through
Accordance, and on Windows through
Logos Bible Software and BibleWorks.
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Edited by Al-Afza, 07 September 2010 - 01:18 AM.
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