063
On November 19, 1991, the Biblical Archaeology Society, publisher of Biblical Archaeology Review, published a two-volume set of photographs of the previously unpublished Dead Sea Scrolls.
The source of the photographs was not disclosed. The volumes were prepared, with an introduction, by Professor Robert H. Eisenman of California State University, Long Beach, and Professor James M. Robinson of Claremont Graduate School, Claremont, California.
The two volumes contain a total of 1,787 plates. Some have been enhanced by infrared photography. The publication was funded by the Irving I. Moskowitz Foundation.
In their introduction, Professors Eisenman and Robinson state:
“Arrangements that initially seemed reasonable need, a generation or so later, to be supplemented by some mechanism by means of which scholars who were beginning their careers when the discoveries were made (not to speak of scholars then not yet born) can gain full access to them before their careers have been completed. It is under this higher claim of the academic community and society at large that the present edition has been initiated.”
Included in this edition are not only texts from the Wadi Qumran, the principal location described by the designation Dead Sea Scrolls, but also unpublished texts from nearby sites—Wadi Murabba’at, Wadi Daliyeh and Nahal Hever.
An index keys each plate to a photograph number in the Rockefeller Museum (formerly the Palestine Archaeological Museum) in Jerusalem. Otherwise, the texts are not identified.
However, Stephen Reed of the Ancient Biblical Manuscript Center in Claremont, California, is, with the help of a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, completing a full catalogue of the published and unpublished texts, which should be available very shortly. With the catalogue, the plates in BAS’s facsimile edition can be identified to the extent they are presently known.
BAS is establishing an Institute for Dead Sea Scroll Studies, which will serve as a secretariat to disseminate and exchange information among all scholars who wish to work on these texts. BAS hopes to supplement and assist other research efforts on the Dead Sea Scrolls, not to compete with or replace those efforts.
In their introduction, Eisenman and Robinson state that, although they do not know the source of the photographs, they are satisfied that they do not come from the Ancient Biblical Manuscript Center in Claremont, which has a restricted set of photographs, nor from the Huntington Library in San Marino, California.
In September, the Huntington Library announced that it would make its negatives of the unpublished Dead Sea Scrolls available to all scholars. Its archive consists of 3,000 unidentified negatives that have not been separated into published and unpublished texts. Moreover, the Huntington has not been in a position, since making this announcement, to meet the extraordinary demand for access. As of this writing, few, if any, scholars have been able to use the Huntington archive.
To Order Your Copy—Supply Limited
The photographs of the texts of the unpublished Dead Sea Scrolls are now available from the Biblical Archaeology Society in a facsimile edition. The publication consists of a two-volume set, A Facsimile Edition of the Dead Sea Scrolls, prepared with an introduction and index by Robert H. Eisenman and James M. Robinson. The set includes 1,787 photographic plates.
The cost of the two-volume set is $195, plus $15 shipping and handling. Credit card orders may be placed by calling toll-free 1–800-221–4644. Orders may also be placed by writing to the Biblical Archaeology Society, 3000 Connecticut Ave., NW, Suite 300, Washington, DC 20008.
This edition has been printed in limited quantities; orders will be filled on a first-come, first-served basis.
On November 19, 1991, the Biblical Archaeology Society, publisher of Biblical Archaeology Review, published a two-volume set of photographs of the previously unpublished Dead Sea Scrolls.
