“Will Marty Abegg Ever Find a Job?”

The monopoly over access to the Dead Sea Scrolls was broken in 1991. One of the key events in that breakup was the publication of Dead Sea Scroll texts that had been reconstructed by computer from a concordance. We will here detail this important, but little known, incident—but first, a little history. By 1960, the eight-man Dead Sea Scroll publication team had some remarkable achievements under its collective belt. The team had already transcribed all of the thousands and thousands of scroll fragments in their possession—estimated at between 15,000 and 25,000. Transcription is the first step in the publication […]