Footnote 8 – BARview: Failure to Publish Dead Sea Scrolls Is Leitmotif of New York University Scroll Conference

Those who have seen the unpublished fragments of the Damascus Document tell us that the order of pages proposed by Schechter is wrong. The unpublished Qumran fragments also contain passages missing from the medieval copies and relating to such subjects as the cultic purity of priests and sacrifices, laws of marriage relations with pagans, relations between the sexes and a prohibition of magic. In addition, the beginning of the Damascus Document, which is missing in the medieval copies, was found at Qumran; this introduction contains what has been characterized by those who have seen it as an “Exhortation: God’s Saving Plan in History.” The Qumran fragments also contain an otherwise missing conclusion. See J. A. Fitzmyer, The Dead Sea Scrolls: Major Publications and Tools for Study, (Scholars Press, 1977), pp. 90–91; see also pp. 20, 21.