Dead Sea Scrolls Update
The Dead Sea Scroll Monopoly Must Be Broken
044
“Why won’t the scholars assigned to edit the Dead Sea Scrolls allow anyone to see photographs of the unpublished manuscripts?”
That is the question that almost immediately arises in any discussion of the Dead Sea Scroll scandal.
We have no good answer. Indeed, we don’t think there is one.
Our usual answer is, “You really ought to ask the scroll editors.”
We recently received a letter from Professor Burton Caine, of Temple University Law School, suggesting we invite chief scroll editor John Strugnell to give his views. We promptly took up the suggestion and issued the invitation to Strugnell on April 2, 1990. To date, no reply.
Most people’s first thought is that the unpublished texts must contain a theological bombshell that someone—the scholars, a government, a religion—is trying to suppress. This is surely not the case.
What then is the reason?
The scroll editors will never admit it, but the reason is simply the craving for power and control that motivates all monopolists—that and the fear of competition.
During the past year, articles and interviews have appeared in hundreds of publications and on radio and television shows all over the world decrying the failure to release the unpublished texts. Many of the articles and interviews include statements from the recalcitrant scholars. We have culled these 045statements in an effort to understand what lies behind the intransigence of the scroll editors.
Most of the time, the scroll editors simply assume that the release of photographs would be terrible. No explanation needed. For example, Professor Joseph Baumgarten of Baltimore Hebrew University, when asked to release photographs of the Damascus Documents, said this would be like sending them to the New York Times—as if this would be so bad.
The most insidious argument has been put forward by scroll editor Eugene Ulrich of Notre Dame University. Ulrich says the texts can’t be released to other scholars because only the scroll editors themselves are competent to read the texts. If you open the texts to other scholars, they will only misread the texts and then circulate false information to the public, who will then be misinformed and misled. Once the public is misinformed, it will be difficult if not impossible to correct things. Therefore the texts must remain secret until edited by the present team of editors in order to protect the public.
According to Professor Ulrich, “The vast majority of people who will use these editions [of the Dead Sea Scrolls]—including average university professors …—are barely able to judge competently difficult readings.”
Ulrich knows this sounds a bit extreme—is, in fact, an affront to hundreds of scholars who are not on the editing team—so he quickly continues, adding insult to injury: “I’m sorry if this sounds arrogant, but it’s true.”
Chief scroll editor John Strugnell concurs. Strugnell has recently charged that no one at Tel Aviv University is qualified to edit a Dead Sea Scroll.
Among the scholars who have been guilty of contaminating scholarship by hastily publishing false readings, says Ulrich, is Hebrew University Professor E. L. Sukenik, Yigael Yadin’s father, who died in 1953. Sukenik, with help from his son and from Professor Nahman Avigad, also of Hebrew University, edited one of the great Isaiah scrolls in the 1950s. “It’s hard to find a page that does not have some significant errors or, at least, highly questionable readings,” says Ulrich. In this way, the public is “shackled with a poor edition.”
If we follow the argument of Ulrich and his confreres, only they can be entrusted with the task, no matter how long it takes. Only their publication will be error-free. When other scholars make mistakes, this is not simply part of the editing process, it is a permanent contamination of scholarship: “No one will ever do right what the editor has failed to do,” contends Ulrich.
For Professor Ulrich, the editing process has not been too slow; it has been too fast. In the words of a Jerusalem Post article: “Ulrich contends that the editing of the scrolls has in fact suffered not from foot-dragging but from undue haste. … Mistakes made by hasty editing of the scrolls are devastating to sound scholarship and almost irreparable, he says.” Quoting Ulrich, the story continues: “If there are mistakes, they will be repeated for the next century and more and become the basis of ill-founded arguments and theories.”
Professor Ulrich is right about one thing. His position certainly does sound arrogant. It not only sounds it, it is!
It is also the voice of a monopolist. It’s like AT&T saying, “Only we know how to operate a first-class telephone system. Introduce competition and you’ll simply destroy a first-class phone system. Competition will only produce chaos.” Fortunately for our phone system, the judge didn’t buy that argument. If he had, we would still be using “princess” phones, available only from AT&T.
Strangely enough, Ulrich’s argument is belied by his own actions. While contending that other university professors are incompetent to edit the scrolls, Ulrich and other members of the team of scroll editors have assigned texts for editing to their own graduate students.
The most succinct answer to the monopolistic argument Ulrich puts forth comes from Father Joseph Fitzmyer of Catholic University of America, in Washington, D.C.:
“There is the scholarly desire to say the last word on the texts. This has been the main reason for the delay in publication. Yet we know that no one who pioneers in the publication of an ancient text ever says the last word on it.”
A more candid, if no less monopolistic, explanation of the scroll editors’ refusal to release photographs comes from scroll editor Frank Cross. He says simply that the current team of scroll editors wants “the credit.” It’s only a “human desire,” he adds.
True, but hardly persuasive. After more than 35 years, this confession surely provides no justification for still keeping photographs of the scrolls secret.
The fact is that publication of the texts is the beginning of the editing process, not the end of it. A future generation will improve Ulrich’s readings just as surely as this generation is improving the readings of the previous generation that Ulrich now disparages.
Indeed, a whole new edition of the already published Dead Sea Scrolls is being prepared by Princeton University Press under the editorship of James Charlesworth. This includes all the texts already published by the current team of editors. Thus, for example, Johns Hopkins Professor Kyle McCarter is preparing a new edition of the Copper Scroll, previously published by J. T. Milik, one of the most prominent of the present team of scroll editors. According to all reports, McCarter is finding many new and improved readings. This is no reproof to Milik. This is what scholarship is all about.
Another argument we sometimes hear is that if anyone can see photographs of the texts, no scholar will work on them because of the possibility of being scooped by some Johnny-come-lately. Nonsense! There are hundreds of scholars dying to work on these texts. Indeed, more money would be available to support research on them if they were opened to all. New editions would continue to replace earlier ones. Dead Sea Scroll scholarship would blossom and flourish. Instead, the present editors spurn a $100,000 offer to publish the photographs (see “Scroll Editors Spurn $100,000 to Publish Book of Photographs of Still-Secret Texts,” in this issue).
In the end, there is no justification for refusing to release photographs of the unpublished texts.
Will the release of the photographs solve the problem? No. More is clearly needed; we need good transcriptions, reconstructions and translations of the texts. Then scholars can begin to interpret the texts. But what is most needed now is the breaking of the monopolistic stranglehold that the current editors—until now, backed by the Israel Antiquities Authority—insist they must have. Whatever justification for such a position that may have existed 35 years ago has certainly dissipated by now.
“Why won’t the scholars assigned to edit the Dead Sea Scrolls allow anyone to see photographs of the unpublished manuscripts?”
That is the question that almost immediately arises in any discussion of the Dead Sea Scroll scandal.
We have no good answer. Indeed, we don’t think there is one.
Our usual answer is, “You really ought to ask the scroll editors.”
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