Footnote 4 – MMT as the Maltese Falcon

Discoveries in the Judean Desert (DJD) 9 offers a striking comparison and contrast with DJD 10 by Qimron and Strugnell. The senior author of DJD 9 (Palaeo-Hebrew and Greek Biblical Manuscripts from Cave 4), published in 1992, is listed as Patrick W. Skehan. Yet Skehan died in 1980, the year in which Qimron began assisting Strugnell with MMT. Eugene Ulrich, who took over from Skehan when he died, nevertheless made Skehan the senior author. Nor is this simply in alphabetical order, for the third-listed author of DJD 9, who joined the project in 1983, is Judith E. Sanderson, whose name appears after Ulrich’s.
I do not mean to suggest that when a scholar dies or gives up the work to a subsequent scholar that the initial scholar’s name should always come first. But that was not the case with Strugnell and Qimron. Strugnell began the MMT analysis, he made a major contribution to the work and continued working to the very end, except during the period of his illness.