Biblical Archaeology Review, January/February 1993

Elisha Qimron, the Israeli Dead Sea Scroll scholar who is suing the Biblical Archaeology Society (BAS) for a quarter of a million dollars, has hired Alan Dershowitz, one of this country’s most famous and most feared lawyers, to fight his case in the United States. Time magazine has called Dershowitz “the top lawyer of […]

Enigmas, secrets—an aura of mystery still surrounds the Dead Sea Scrolls, as the titles of these videos attest. And the mere fact that videos are being produced for a mass-market on this once-obscure subject indicates that interest in the scrolls is as high now as when they were first discovered in the late 1940s and early 1950s near the site of Qumran, on the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea.

Few of the recently published Dead Sea Scrolls have generated as much controversy as payment 4Q285, popularly known as the Pierced Messiah text. The debate over its meaning has raged in the pages of this magazine. Now two of the principal scholars in that debate, Robert Eisenman, chair of the department of religious studies […]

Computers Enhance Scroll Studies If “making it” in today’s world means being on a computer, then Dead Sea Scroll studies have finally arrived. Two new developments have thrust the scrolls into the digital arena.

“All the world’s a stage,” Shakespeare declared. Few places, however, provide a more dramatic backdrop for history making events than the Near East. Birthplace of the three major Western religions, much-traveled roadway for bloody conquerors and pious pilgrims alike, the jewel-in-the-crown of many an empire and also the undoing of those very same empires, […]

In a summer of sweaty, dirty, demanding volunteer work, one particularly arduous morning stands out. We were dismantling a Persian-period wall at Ashkelon. My job was to work the stones free with a pick and then carry them in my arms over a treacherous terrain of balks, pits and trenches. That was the first […]

One morning in February, about nine o’clock, I was having breakfast. On my left Ulf and Helena were speaking German; on my far right Ami, Aaron and Tami were discussing the day’s work in Hebrew; in front of me Amanda from South Africa was listening to Michael’s Australian version of English; and at my […]

History runs deep at Tel Dor—45 feet deep to be exact! Layer upon layer of ancient cities, each built on the ruins of its predecessor, have formed this immense mound on Israel’s Mediterranean coast, about 12 miles south of Haifa. As extraordinary as the mound’s size is the large number of different people who […]

With so much public attention lately focused on the Dead Sea Scrolls, the question is frequently asked, with increasing insistence: Are there more scrolls—either undiscovered in the caves or in the hands of the Bedouin or of those who acquired them from the Bedouin? This article will suggest that the answer is yes on […]