Dead Sea Scrolls Research Council: Fragments
Dead Sea Scroll Research Burgeoning
Dead Sea Scroll research is growing by leaps and bounds. Two new organizations have recently been formed—in addition to BAS’s own Dead Sea Scrolls Research Council (formerly the Institute for Dead Sea Scroll Studies)—to support and undertake research on the scrolls.
The first is a part of Oxford University in England. Directed by Oxford don and leading Dead Sea Scroll scholar Geza Vermes, it is called the Oxford Forum for Qumran Research and is a part of the Oxford Centre for Postgraduate Hebrew Studies. Dr. Timothy H. Lim, a Junior Research Fellow of the Centre serves as secretary of the forum. The purpose of the forum is to provide a facility where scholars will be invited to do research and attend seminars, making use of the resources of the Centre, Oxford University and the Bodleian Library.
To aid the work of the forum, the Oxford Centre has established a Qumran Room in its library. The room contains photographic copies of all the scrolls, the 4,000-page concordance of the non-Biblical scrolls and a computer that can enlarge and enhance the photographs (see “Reconstructing the Scrolls Byte by Byte,” in this issue).
The forum is pioneering inquiry into the recently released, unpublished scrolls by hosting fortnightly seminars on specific texts attended by both British and foreign scholars. The first nine such seminars examined four documents: (1) the unpublished versions of the Community Rule, the Qumran sect’s constitution, which presents a more democratic “congregation” than in other documents and therefore will require scholars to make a major reinterpretation of the sect’s structure; (2) a new Hebrew account of the Biblical Flood, deciphered and translated by Dr. Lim, that presents events in accordance with Qumran’s own solar calendar; (3) a controversial messianic text (see “The ‘Pierced Messiah’ Text—An Interpretation Evaporates,” in this issue); and (4) the so-called Son of God text.a
The second new organization is the Dead Sea Scrolls Foundation. Formed with the approval of the Israel Antiquities Authority last autumn, the foundation will initially direct its efforts toward raising funds for the preservation and publication of the scrolls. It will try to accelerate the publication process by funding the work of the more than 50 scholars who make up the official publication team. Founder and executive director Dr. Weston Fields, formerly of Grace Theological Seminary in Winona Lake, Indiana, hopes the foundation will gradually expand its activities as a sponsor of seminars, scholarships and scroll-related research and publication.
Not affiliated with any university, the foundation was established with seed money from several individuals and has applied for grants from a number of private foundations. It has been incorporated in Indiana and expects to receive its tax-exempt classification from the IRS shortly. The foundation’s board of directors and board of advisors include many eminent Dead Sea Scroll scholars from around the world and from both the Jewish and Christian communities. The first official meeting of the board of directors will take place at the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature in San Francisco in November. Until then, the interim chairman of the board is Professor Emanuel Tov of Hebrew University, the editor in chief of the Dead Sea Scroll publication team.
The foundation has already established a Sponsor a Scroll program, by which anyone may help underwrite the cost of restoration and/or publication of everything from a scroll fragment ($500) up to all the texts in one volume of the official publication series ($100,000). For more information, write to the foundation at P.O. Box 1775, Warsaw, IN 46581; or P.O. Box 24265, Jerusalem, Israel.
In addition, BAS has established its own Dead Sea Scrolls Research Council (DSSRC), which is the new name of the Institute previously announced in the January/February 1992 issue. The aims of the DSSRC remain the same: to facilitate the dissemination and exchange of information and research materials concerning the Dead Sea Scrolls among all scholars.