018
BAR’s article on the Dead Sea Scrolls scandal in the July/August issue (“Dead Sea Scrolls Scandal—Israel’s Department of Antiquities Joins Conspiracy to Keep Scrolls Secret,” BAR 15:04) focused worldwide attention on the fact that, more than 40 years after the discovery of the first scroll in a cave near the Dead Sea, scholars are still denied access to more than 400 unpublished texts.
Articles based on BAR’s story appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Jerusalem Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Times and in hundreds of other newspapers all over the world via an Associated Press wire story. The New York Times considered its report so important that it listed it on the front-page as one of the significant articles to be found inside.
The theme was the same in all the articles: A small group of scholars who control the scrolls, with the sanction of the Israeli government, decides who gets to see what and who gets to study what. The public and other scholars are excluded.
Reading these articles, one is struck with how very little the public has been told about the unpublished texts or the process by which they are supposedly published.
A second observation stems from our particular vantage point. In the words of the Jerusalem Post, “BAR has waged a four-year campaign to make the scrolls accessible to anyone who wants to study them.” Reading these recent press articles from this vantage point, we realized the extent to which Israel’s Department of Antiquities and the chief editor of the scroll team have “stonewalled” requests for information. We don’t even know for sure who the members of the team of editors are. Originally, in 1953, King Hussein of Jordan, who then exercised jurisdiction over the unpublished scrolls, allowed Father Roland de Vaux of the French-run École Biblique in Jerusalem to appoint the team of editors. The Dominican scholar appointed a coterie of his close colleagues whose names are known. In addition to de Vaux, they were Father J. T. Milik, Monsignor Patrick Skehan, Father Jean Starcky, Dr. Claus Hunzinger, Professor John Strugnell, Professor John Allegro and Professor Frank Moore Cross. Of this original eight-man team, four have died and one is inactive (he is no longer a member of the team).
That leaves three of the original team of eight. Replacements on the team have been made by the “buddy-boy” system. No votes. No procedures. When Father de Vaux died, he was replaced by his Dominican colleague at the École Biblique, Father Pierre Benoit. When Monsignor Skehan died, he was replaced by his colleague Professor Eugene Ulrich of Notre Dame University.
The question of who is a member of the team is a matter of more than passing importance. In order to get access to a particular unpublished text, you must apply to the scholar on the team to whom it has been assigned. As General Amir Drori, head of Israel’s Department of Antiquities, recently stated, these texts are “assigned to a scholar on a personal basis”—so personal that a team scholar who has received an assignment may reassign, subassign and even bequeath his assignment.
Bequests apparently earn the legatee a spot on the team. That is, a legacy carries with it not only the personal right to control publication of the bequeathed texts, but also membership on the team of editors. Witness the case of Ulrich who inherited from Skehan and the case of Benoit who inherited from de Vaux.
Several years after Professor Ulrich assumed responsibility for publishing the texts originally assigned to Monsignor Skehan, I talked to Ulrich about his position on the team of editors. He said he didn’t know whether or not he was a member of the team. He said he presumed he was, but he had never participated in any team decision or voted on anything or even attended a team meeting. Nor had he received any notification that he was a member of the team.
A subassignment of publication rights from a team member, however, clearly 019does not make you a member of the team. Subassignments go to a particular scholar’s students who work under the supervision of the assigning scholar. Someone with a subassignment has no authority to permit any other scholar access to his or her subassignment.
Reassignments are a more difficult question, but the answer seems to be the same as with subassignments. Reassignments are made to colleagues. Reassignments have apparently been made to two Israeli scholars, Elisha Qimron and Emmanuel Tov. When I last spoke to them, however, neither considered himself a member of the team.
Finally, the material originally assigned to Father Starcky has apparently been reassigned to Father Emil Puech of the École Biblique. It’s a good bet that Puech himself doesn’t know if he’s a member of the team. If he isn’t, to whom do you apply for permission to see the texts originally assigned to Starcky? By default, you must apply to Puech.
In sum, there are three certain members of the team (Strugnell, Milik and Cross), one very probable (Ulrich) and one by necessity (Puech)—a maximum of five people who separately control access to the unpublished scrolls. A number of others with subassignments and reassignments have more or less responsibility for publication of the scrolls, but they have no authority to grant an outsider access.
So if you want access to any of the 400 unpublished scrolls, apply to one of these five people. But which one? Ay, there’s the rub. The team has never released any list of the unpublished texts or the various assignments of publication rights. Such a list exists, but the team hasn’t released it and Israel’s Department of Antiquities keeps it secret. We got hold of a copy of the list updated to 1980 and that is how we were able to publish in our May/June issue (“At Least Publish the Dead Sea Scrolls Timetable!” BAR 15:03) a list of the 50 unpublished texts that Milik has been sitting on for more than 30 years.
But there is a more recent list which has not been made public. It should be. According to Strugnell, the old catalogue is “very incomplete … 1/3 of the plates and another 1/2 of the negatives were omitted.” Why not release the new catalogue and tell us all about it?
Which raises another point: Not only don’t we know who to apply to, we don’t know what to apply for. No one outside what Columbia Professor T. H. Gaster called “the charmed circle” knows what’s in the unpublished texts, so how do you ask for them? About four years ago, the new chief editor, John Strugnell, revealed at some scholarly conferences that an extraordinary letter designated “MMT” was among the unpublished documents. The scholarly world is still awaiting imminent publication of the letter, but before Strugnell mentioned it, there was no way for an outsider to know to ask for access to it.
What else is in the unpublished texts? Magen Broshi, curator of the Shrine of the Book, which houses some of the published scrolls, suggests that it may not be much; he recently told the Jerusalem Post, “I don’t say [the unpublished texts] aren’t important, but the cream was skimmed off long ago.”
Strugnell, however, is quoted in the Washington Times as saying that “‘New details will certainly modify our opinions’ regarding the life and times of Jesus and the rabbinic period, but ‘I don’t think it will overturn our basic opinions.’”
Anson Rainey, a professor at Tel Aviv University, recently referred to “the many priceless [Dead Sea] texts still awaiting publication.”
After more than 30 years the public should certainly be given a list of the unpublished texts with a reasonable description of the known subject matter and contents of the texts, a list of the plates and negatives and the name of the scholar to whom each has been assigned for publication. Otherwise, you don’t have enough information even to apply for permission to see them.
In a letter to the Department of Antiquities earlier this year, we specifically asked for “a more detailed description of [the texts assigned to Milik]. How many plates are involved?” 020The answer we received was a brush-off: The “Suggested Timetable,” we were told in reply, is what “we wish to bring to the attention of the public.” All of our specific questions remained unanswered.
Earlier, we had written both the Department of Antiquities and the new chief editor asking for copies of letters the members of the team of editors had written describing their progress and future plans. Neither the department nor the chief editor replied. (We have since repeated this request.)
Of the five members of the current team, it appears that Milik and Strugnell control the vast majority of unpublished texts that other scholars would like to see. Cross and Ulrich have only Biblical texts, in contrast to sectarian texts held by Milik and Strugnell. Moreover, Cross and Ulrich have almost completed their work and they have said that the Biblical texts do not contain any real surprises.
We have been told that there are approximately 400 separate unpublished texts arranged on 1,200 different plates. A reasonable guess is that 100 of these are Biblical texts on 200 plates. That still leaves 300 texts and 1,000 plates in the hands of three people. As for Puech, we are told in the “Suggested Timetable” that he has 44 plates, which we’ll round to 50; let us suppose this includes 25 different texts. This leaves 275 texts and 950 plates in the hands of two men—Milik and Strugnell.
Suppose our calculations are off. Suppose Milik and Strugnell control only 200 texts and 700 plates. That is still an enormous archive.
One of the pair (Milik) will not answer correspondence—even from Israel’s Department of Antiquities. According to the New York Times report, “Repeated phone calls to Dr. Milik … were unanswered.”
The other member of the pair (Strugnell) published only one short text between the time of his original assignment and 1977. After several years, he is about to publish the text mentioned above (MMT), which he says is a letter of 120 lines.
Some members of the team have been offended because we seemed to castigate the entire team although all have not been guilty. Perhaps this criticism is justified. We have now identified the bottleneck—Milik and Strugnell.
In the meantime, it is widely believed that outside scholars who complain about their lack of access to unpublished texts place themselves in serious jeopardy of being cut out of whatever small access to the unpublished texts there may be on the basis of the buddy-system.
The case of Dr. Robert Eisenman, chairman of the Department of Religious Studies at California State University, Long Beach, illustrates not only the dangers but the frustrations in formally requesting access to unpublished texts.
Last March Eisenman sent to both Strugnell and the head of the Department of Antiquities (General Drori) formal requests for access to specific texts assigned to Milik.
Drori responded with a brush-off. He did not reply specifically to the request for access. Instead, in a few short paragraphs he told Eisenman that the publication assignments had been made “on a personal basis” (perhaps implying that Eisenman should address his request to Milik—who won’t even answer Drori’s letters), that progress on scroll publication would be monitored closely and that access to already published scrolls could be arranged through “our curators.”
Strugnell’s imperious reply to Eisenman’s request for access displays extraordinary intellectual hauteur and academic condescension. Insofar as it responds to Eisenman’s request, it too implies that he should apply to Milik. With mock-seriousness, Strugnell writes: “I have not as yet received any letter from the various designated editors [Milik] of these works, acknowledging the request you doubtless had sent them, and agreeing that the copies you ask for should be made available to you. This, however, has been the way such requests for access have been handled in the past (—only rarely has it been necessary for the editor-in-chief to intervene) … ”
Strugnell’s attitude toward requests for access is reflected in a statement he made to the Associated Press: “My problem is to get the scrolls published, not satisfy the vanities of particular scholars.”
022
In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, according to its published report, Strugnell “alluded critically to one of Eisenman’s theories.” It’s dangerous to request access, Eisenman has been taught. In the Jerusalem Post, Magen Broshi, the curator of the Shrine of the Book, called Eisenman “a very minor scientist” (Eisenman has published two books on the Dead Sea Scrolls).
Is it any wonder that a number of scholars have agreed to speak to the press only anonymously?
One “scholar in the field” told the Los Angeles Times: “I find it hard to believe that a few scholars can stonewall the Dead Sea Scrolls and keep them from scholarly access for much longer. The situation has become an embarrassment in the field.” But the scholar who made this statement cautiously refused to allow his name to be used.
Another “respected scholar” who prudently declined to be identified told the Los Angeles Times that Strugnell won’t “grant access to people who haven’t made a serious contribution to the field.”
What can be done?
Several things:
1. Israel’s Department of Antiquities should promptly publish a public report listing the unpublished documents, what is known of their contents and the scholar who is responsible for their publication. This report should also include technical information regarding plates, number designations, negatives, and so on.
2. Each of the scholars on the publication team should authorize the Department of Antiquities to provide access to the scrolls to any scholar who applies. If Milik and Strugnell decline to give this authorization, consideration should be given to declaring that access is available without their authorization.
3. The Department of Antiquities should appoint a committee of scholars—possibly the oversight committee already appointed—to meet with Strugnell and Milik to discuss reassigning some of the texts which these two men cannot get to for years.
These are simple, sensible steps to which no one should object.
In the furor that followed publication of the BAR article, several prominent scholars have publicly lamented the slow pace of publication of the Dead Sea Scroll materials:
According to the Jerusalem Post, the dean of Israeli archaeologists, Hebrew University Professor Benjamin Mazar, “agreed that some of the scholars had been lax in their duties. ‘Some were spoiled and worked too slowly,’ said Mazar.”
According to the Associated Press, Columbia University historian Morton Smith stated, “For [these materials] to be kept from other scholars and general knowledge is, I think, simply outrageous.”
The Associated Press report quoted Magen Broshi, curator of the Shrine of the Book, which houses some of the larger scrolls: “It’s true that scholars have been dragging their feet for the past 40 years. It’s an absolute scandal.”
New York University Professor Lawrence Schiffman told the Los Angeles Times with respect to the material Milik controls, “I expect to be waiting a long time for it.” Schiffman added, “We still face the problem of doing scholarship with large amounts of material still unavailable,” he said.
The Los Angeles Times summarized the views of most scholars it surveyed: “Scholarly progress [in publishing the Dead Sea Scrolls] has been snail-paced.”
Although the “Suggested Timetable” released by Israel’s Department of Antiquities calls for the scholars to complete their work by 1996, Strugnell predicted to the Associated Press that the scroll project would be completed by the end of the century. BAR’s still-unanswered question directed to the Department of Antiquities thus becomes even more critical: Who agreed to the “Suggested Timetable” with its 1996 date? Why won’t they tell us? And why won’t they give us the evidence showing who agreed to the “Suggested Timetable”?
Although Antiquities Department head Amir Drori declined to tell BAR how he planned to assure compliance with the “Suggested Timetable,” he did tell the Associated Press. According to the Associated Press report, Drori said “that he set up a program to require annual progress reports and get the scholars to agree on publishing all their finds in seven years.” Why won’t Drori tell BAR about this program requiring annual reports? Why won’t he give us the evidence of the scholars’ agreement?
The story of the Dead Sea Scrolls scandal is still unfolding.
