Milestone: Geza Vermes (1924–2013)

My friend Geza Vermes is dead. He was, most famously, the intellectual leader in the fight to free the Dead Sea Scrolls from the small coterie of scholars who was assigned to publish them but endlessly procrastinated and wouldn’t allow anyone else to see them in the meantime. Geza Vermes (GAY-za ver-MESH) really started the public campaign to free the scrolls with his ringing prediction at a lecture in 1977: “The world is entitled to ask the authorities … what they intend to do about this lamentable state of affairs. For unless drastic measures are taken at once, the […]