Bits & Pieces

068

Correction on Annenberg Research Institute

In “Meyers Leaves Annenberg Research Institute; Dead Sea Scrolls Project on Track,” BAR 18:04, we reported that the Annenberg Research Institute of Philadelphia will be absorbed into the University of Pennsylvania, but that its Dead Sea Scroll research project would not be affected. We received a telephone call from Albert Wood, a member of ARI’s executive committee, informing us that ARI was still “negotiating with the University of Pennsylvania” and that the parties were still “far from a yes or no.” According to Wood, “Walter Annenberg feels he would like us to join with the University of Pennsylvania,” and the parties “are trying to resolve matters in an amicable way.” In the past, ARI has looked into a possible merger with Temple University and with Bryn Mawr College, but these discussions never worked out. “It has to be good for both sides,” Wood said. The parties are engaged in “intimate discussions that are not for the press. They would only distort it,” Wood added.

BAR Editor Receives Haverford Award

BAR editor Hershel Shanks was presented with the Haverford Award at alumni-day ceremonies at Haverford College, in Haverford, Pennsylvania, on May 30, 1992.

The award “seeks to identify, reward and focus public attention on those alumni who best reflect Haverford’s concern with the uses to which its students apply their knowledge, humanity, initiative, and individuality.” The award cited Shanks for “spearheading a campaign to release [the Dead Sea Scrolls] to all interested scholars.”

Shanks was also the subject of a profile entitled “Scroll Man” in the Washington Post Sunday Magazine on May 10, 1992. “It could be argued,” the profile stated, “that the only reason most people know about the scrolls [or] care about the scrolls … is because of Shanks. A bunch of scholars now hate him … But even his enemies have to admit that Shanks has done an extraordinary job … ”

More Help for Scroll Research

A Dead Sea Scroll prophecy has been fulfilled. More than two years ago, BAR’s editor Hershel Shanks predicted that free access to the scroll photographs would not only stimulate scholarship but would also bring forth more financial support for scroll research.^a Last issue we saw that this had already begun to occur with the formation of the Oxford Forum for Qumran Research and the Dead Sea Scrolls Foundation as well as BAS’s own Dead Sea Scrolls Research Council.^b Now another organization, The Scroll People, has sprung up to help finance Dead Sea Scroll research.

Registered in Illinois and recognized by the IRS as a tax-exempt, nonprofit, charitable-educational organization, Scroll People will focus on raising and dispensing funds for educational projects on the Dead Sea Scrolls. Such projects may include translation, study-research, writing a book, purchase of equipment or reference materials, etc. Scroll People plans to provide financial support both to qualified individual scholars and to institutions, but it expects to spend its first year in acquiring funds and compiling a list of grant applicants.

The four directors of The Scroll People are John Harris, Joseph Hirsch, Jack Larson and Ken Larson.

Persons wishing to make donations or to apply for grants may write to: The Scroll People, P.O. Box 268093, Chicago, IL 60626–8093.

Paperback Edition of The Dead Sea Scrolls in English Available

BAR readers often ask where they can find translations of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Well this is one place. In 1987, Dead Sea Scroll scholar Geza Vermes, whose work was highlighted last issue in “The ‘Pierced Messiah’ Text—An Interpretation Evaporates,” produced a revised third edition of his book The Dead Sea Scrolls in English. This collection of the published non-Biblical Qumran scrolls first appeared in 1962 as a source work for the general reader. It provides a window into the customs, beliefs and history of the Qumran community, and it has been used as a textbook for Qumran courses in colleges and universities. Vermes expanded the 1987 edition, published in hardcover by Sheffield Academic Press, to include material made available in recent years. Now the 1987 edition is available for the first time in paperback from Penguin Books, 375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014. The price for the 320-page book is $10, not including shipping and handling.

Classic Studies of Dead Sea Scrolls Reprinted

BAR’s successful campaign for free access to the unpublished Dead Sea Scrolls stimulated so much interest in the general public that Crossroad/Continuum, a New York publisher, has launched a reprint series that includes classic studies of the scrolls. The Crossroad Christian Origins Library will bring back into print, in an affordable paperback format, important books on various aspects of early Judaism and Christian origins, with special emphasis on Dead Sea Scroll studies. In general the volumes retain the original text, augmented with a new introduction and up-to-date bibliography.

The editor of the series is James H. Charlesworth, George L. Collord Professor of New Testament Language and Literature at Princeton Theological Seminary and the editor of the seminary’s Dead Sea Scrolls Project. Charlesworth chooses the books to be reprinted and contributes a new introduction to each volume.

The following volumes have been published so far at prices ranging from $14.95 to $16.95: The Scrolls and the New Testament edited by Krister Stendahl, The Message of the Scrolls by Yigael Yadin, John and the Dead Sea Scrolls edited by James H. Charlesworth, Paul and the Dead Sea Scrolls edited by Jerome Murphy-O’Connor and James H. Charlesworth, The Faith of Qumran: Theology of the Dead Sea Scrolls by Helmer Ringgren and The First Christian Hymnbook by James H. Charlesworth.

Anticipated future volumes include: Treasure of Qumran: My Story of the Dead Sea Scrolls by Archbishop Athanasius Yeshue Samuel, The Pseudepigrapha and the New Testament by James H. Charlesworth, Jesus by Hugh Anderson, The War Scroll by Yigael Yadin and The Archaeology of the Dead Sea Scrolls by Roland de Vaux.

For more information, write: Crossroad/Continuum, 370 Lexington Ave., New York, NY 10017; or call 212–532-3650.

Correction on Annenberg Research Institute