BAS Publishes Dead Sea Scrolls

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The monopoly held by the small coterie of scholars who control the still-secret Dead Sea Scrolls is slowly being broken.

The Biblical Archaeology Society, publisher of Biblical Archaeology Review and Bible Review, is publishing A Preliminary Edition of the Unpublished Dead Sea Scrolls—The Hebrew and Aramaic Texts from Cave Four, edited and reconstructed by Professor Ben Zion Wacholder and Martin G. Abegg, both of Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Wacholder and Abegg reconstructed the texts from a concordance assembled in the late 1950s but not published until 1988; a copy of the concordance was deposited in 1989 in the library of Hebrew Union College, where Wacholder teaches. The concordance lists in alphabetical order all words in the non-Biblical texts found in Qumran 4, the richest of the caves, containing fragments of more than 500 different scrolls. It identifies the various texts in which each word is found. For each word listed, the concordance also gives adjacent words. With the aid of a computer, Wacholder and Abegg have been able to reconstruct texts that are still being kept secret by the official team of editors.

The concordance proves that the texts of the documents were transcribed as much as 30 years ago and could have been made available to scholars as early as 1960.

In their introduction to the first fascicle of the reconstructed texts (which consist of texts known as the Zadokite Fragments [the Damascus Covenant] and eight Essene calendars), Wacholder and Abegg state that they began their project as a personal one, for their own use, “frustrated by the realization that at the current rate of publication we shall all be dead when the corpus of Dead Sea texts become available to the world.” Wacholder, a well-known scroll scholar and the author of The Dawn of Qumran, is now 67 years old. Abegg, a graduate student, is 41 years old.

In addition to their reconstructions from the concordance, Wacholder and Abegg, through their own scholarship, have made the texts more readable and coherent.

Oddly enough, the concordance from which Wacholder and Abegg worked was not prepared by the team of editors who control access to the secret texts, nor by their predecessors. The concordance is the work of four then-young scholars who were not part of the team but are now prominent elderly scholars. They are Father Raymond Brown, of Union Theological Seminary in New York; Father Joseph A. Fitzmeyer, Professor Emeritus at Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.; Will G. Oxtoby of the University of Toronto, Canada; and the Spanish scholar J. Teixidor.

Even these scholars, however, were not allowed to see the concordance—their own work—until it was published in 1988. Fitzmeyer recalls that a pirated copy of the unpublished concordance was offered to him for $300.^a

Wacholder and Abegg “assure the scholarly world that, albeit its many imperfections, this edition approximates the contents of the unpublished works of the Dead Sea Scrolls. It does not presume to present the official edition we all eagerly await.” They say their preliminary edition will also be useful to the official editors because even they do not have free access to texts assigned to others. As Wacholder and Abegg state, “This edition, imperfect as it is, will furnish to these learned men and women [the official editors] a glimpse into the work of their colleagues.”

The texts in the first fascicle contain, according to Wacholder and Abegg, “a mine of information.”

Future fascicles will be published periodically as Wacholder and Abegg proceed with their work.

The publication of these texts has been supported by a generous grant from the Manfred and Anne Lehmann Foundation in memory of their son, Hayim Menachem (Jamie) (1950–1982).

Help Needed for Dead Sea Scrolls

We need help to support the continuing research required to reconstruct the secret Dead Sea Scrolls and to publish them, as described in the accompanying article.

For donations of $500 or more, we will send you a personally autographed copy of volume one of A Preliminary Edition of the Unpublished Dead Sea Scrolls—The Hebrew and Aramaic Texts from Cave Four and will print your name as a supporting donor in volume two. If you wish to make your donation in memory of a loved one or to honor someone, please include the name. Donations in all amounts are welcome. This is a wonderful project in which to participate.

Send all contributions to Dead Sea Scrolls, Biblical Archaeology Society, 3000 Connecticut Ave., NW, Suite 300, Washington, DC 20008. All contributions are tax-deductible.

To Order Your Copy

Volume One of A Preliminary Edition of the Unpublished Dead Sea Scrolls, consisting of 118 pages of Hebrew and Aramaic texts, plus an English introduction, is available from the Biblical Archaeology Society, 3000 Connecticut Ave., NW, Suite 300, Washington, DC 20008. The cost is $25, plus $3 shipping and handling. Credit card orders may be placed by calling toll-free 1–800-221–4644.

The monopoly held by the small coterie of scholars who control the still-secret Dead Sea Scrolls is slowly being broken.