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More Progress
Second Scroll Editor Agrees to End Monopoly
Slowly but surely, the monopoly traditionally exercised by Dead Sea Scroll editors is being relaxed, if not actually broken. A second scroll editor, Eugene Ulrich of Notre Dame University, has agreed to allow any scholar to see photographs of the scrolls assigned to him for editing. Ulrich controls most of the still-unpublished texts of Biblical books. He is nearing completion of the work assigned to him, which he received as a subassignment from Frank M. Cross of Harvard University.
The first scholar to break ranks, as reported in Queries & Comments, BAR 16:03, was James C. VanderKam of North Carolina State University, who agreed to allow anyone to see photographs of the scrolls recently assigned to him. Ulrich, by contrast, would limit circulation of photographs of his texts to scholars.
Meanwhile, in a telephone interview from his Paris apartment, J. T. Milik, who has the bulk of the most sought-after documents, branded as “irresponsible” the decision to allow all comers to see photographs of unpublished texts.
Another Resolution
Scholars Ask for Dead Sea Scroll Photographs, Pronto!
A conference of scholars meeting at California State University, Long Beach, has called for prompt publication of photographs of the unpublished Dead Sea Scroll texts so that all scholars will have access to them. This is the same resolution of the Dead Sea Scroll publication scandal as has been urged by BAR.
A resolution was adopted by the Long Beach conference on April 29, 1990, stating: “A facsimile edition of the unpublished fragments of the Qumran manuscripts should be published as soon as possible … It would be the first step in throwing the field open to all scholars irrespective of point-of-view or approach.”
The resolution noted that this procedure had been followed in the case of the Nag Hammadi codices, found in Egypt in the same year as the first of the Dead Sea 006Scrolls. The Nag Hammadi codices are especially important to students of early Christianity. They have long been available for study by all scholars. The publication of Nag Hammadi photographs, the Long Beach resolution noted, “had been particularly helpful in the case of Nag Hammadi studies in overcoming similar logjams of the type that exists in Qumran studies.”
Resolutions at scholarly conferences are rare. The Long Beach resolution, however, was the second time a scholarly conference has adopted a resolution regarding the Dead Sea Scrolls. In 1989, a conference of Qumran scholars meeting in Mogilany, Poland called for “plates of all as yet unpublished material [to be published] as soon as possible as separate volumes and in advance of the accompanying definitive critical editions of that material.” The Polish conference called the “present and continuing delay in publication of Qumran scrolls material wholly unacceptable.”
The Long Beach conference was organized by Robert Eisenman, chair of the university’s Religious Studies Department. Participants included James M. Robinson of the Institute of Antiquity and Christianity, who headed a team of scholars who initially translated the Nag Hammadi codices. Also participating in the conference was Ludwig Koenen, a leading papyrologist from the University of Michigan. Other participants included well-known Qumran critics Norman Golb of the University of Chicago and David Noel Freedman of the University of Michigan and the University of California, San Diego.
Professor Koenen pointed out that in papyri studies a five-year limit is the norm for editorial control. After that, the document is considered to be in the public domain, he said. In the case of the Dead Sea Scrolls, editorial control has exceeded 35 years, and outside scholars are still being excluded.
Professor Freedman said he regarded the present situation in Dead Sea Scroll research as reprehensible. He felt that the situation could be rectified by the publication of materials by whatever means possible.
At the conclusion of the conference, a press release was issued summarizing the results.
Two More
Vermes and Ullendorf Call for Release of Photographs
BAR has long urged that the solution to the Dead Sea Scroll scandal is to publish photographs of all the unpublished texts and let all scholars—including those with scroll assignments—have a go at collating, reconstructing, transcribing, translating and analyzing them.
We recently learned that we were not the first to make this suggestion. On June 11, 1987, Oxford don Geza Vermes made the following remarks at a symposium on the Dead Sea Scrolls at Warburg Institute, London (as this quotation reflects in a footnote, publication of photographs is also the suggestion of another internationally respected scholar, Professor Edward Ullendorf, formerly of the University of London). Said Professor Vermes:
“Is it not apposite therefore to ask whether the time has come for a rethinking and revision of the original editorial policy so that the publication of the remaining volumes can really be speeded up? If I were in the driver’s seat, I know what I would try to do. First of all, I would issue at once a full descriptive catalogue of all the unpublished fragments. Next, I might envisage a much simplified edition: photographs, transliteration and the barest minimum of annotation. On second thoughts, even this would demand more time than is justifiable after 34 years of slow motion editing. So in the end I think I would opt for a genuinely radical instant solution, cancelling even the need for a descriptive catalogue. (This proposal is essentially the same as the one put forward by Professor Edward Ullendorf in a letter to The [London] Times of today, 11 June [1987].) I would print straight away the photographs of all the fragments as assembled by their editors, giving them full credit for their labors. That is to say, the plates would come first, followed as soon as possible by the introductions and the rest of the editorial material. If needed, I am certain funding could be obtained without much difficulty to support such an altruistic venture, enabling genuine progress in Qumran and related research. At the same time, the charge of weakness or procrastination on the part of the editor-in-chief would be lifted from his shoulders, and the other editors also would escape being accused of displaying a kind of proprietary attitude towards an immense cultural treasure whose trustees they are, but which in fact belongs to us all.”
Publication of the photographs has also been urged by a congress of Dead Sea Scroll scholars that met in Mogilany Poland and, more recently, by another scholarly symposium from the University of California Long Beach. However, the team of scroll editors who control access to the photographs, backed by the Israeli oversight committee, remains adamantly opposed.
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Professor Vermes, who headed the team that recently completed the revision of Emil Schurer’s classic History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ commented that this “would have been no doubt a better, and certainly a much more complete book, if its editors had been able to obtain access to all the relevant unpublished [Dead Sea Scrolls].”
At present, photographs of all Dead Sea Scroll texts, including unpublished ones, are being assembled at the library of the Oxford Centre for Post-graduate Hebrew Studies. According to the center’s May 1990 newsletter, approximately 3,000 photographs will be deposited at the center’s library pursuant to an agreement with a British-based charitable foundation that is funding research on the scrolls.
“Scholars who wish to see unpublished photographs, however, can only do so,” says the newsletter, “by written permission from [scroll editor in chief John] Strugnell.”
The scroll editorial team has spurned a $100,000 offer from an American charitable foundation (transmitted through BAR) to publish a book of photographs of the unpublished Dead Sea Scroll texts. This offer has now been transmitted to the Israeli government, which has not yet replied.
Public Seminar
BAR Editor Will Moderate Smithsonian Seminar
Several internationally renowned scholars will gather in Washington, D.C., on October 27, 1990, to deliver lectures at an all-day seminar, “The Dead Sea Scrolls: After Forty Years,” sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution’s Resident Associate program. BAR editor Hershel Shanks will both moderate the seminar and present its opening lecture, a historical overview of the scrolls’ discovery and the problems that have long delayed publication. He will be followed by James C. VanderKam (North Carolina State University) on “Implications for the History of Judaism and Christianity,” P. Kyle McCarter (Johns Hopkins University) on “The Mystery of the Copper Scroll” and James A. Sanders (Claremont Graduate School and the Ancient Biblical Manuscript Center for Preservation and Research) on “Understanding the Development of the Biblical Text.” A panel discussion will conclude the seminar. For more information, call 202–357-3030.
Colloquium
Scholars Will Discuss Dead Sea Scroll Perspective at Siena College
“Forty Years in the Desert: Judaism and Christianity from the Perspective of the Dead Sea Scrolls” will be the theme of the sixth annual colloquium of the Institute for Jewish-Christian Studies on October 21 and 22, 1990. The scholars-in-residence and their lecture topics at the colloquium will be James A. Sanders, Claremont Graduate School, California: “The Dead Sea Scrolls and Biblical Studies”; Lawrence H. Schiffman, New York University, New York “Light on the History of Judaism from the Dead Sea Scrolls”; Eileen Schuller, McMaster University, Ontario: “Thanksgiving Prayers and Psalms from the Dead Sea Scrolls.”
The colloquium will take place at Siena College in Loudonville, New York, a suburb of Albany.
Additional details may be obtained from Dr. Peter Zaas, Institute for Jewish-Christian Studies, Siena College, Loudonville, NY 12211; phone (518) 783–2356.
