Discovery and Publication

The dramatic story of the discovery of the first Dead Sea Scrolls has been re-told in numerous publications with some variations. The following summary provides some of the basic information underlying the intrigue. The first seven scrolls were found in 1947 by a Bedouin goat-herder, Muhammed "ed-Dib" ("the wolf") Ahmad al-Hamid, when his search for a lost goat led him and two companions to a cave in which they found a number of unusual clay jars, including some that contained scrolls. They brought the scrolls for appraisal to a Bethlehem merchant and antiquities dealer, Khalil Iskander ("Kando") Shahin. Kando purchased four of the initial seven scrolls, which he then sold to the Metropolitan Mar Athanasius Yeshue Samuel, head of the Syrian Orthodox Monastery of St. Mark in Jerusalem. The other three scrolls were purchased on behalf of the Hebrew University by Professor Eliezer Lipa Sukenik, a specialist in archaeology and ancient Hebrew script, who was the first expert to recognize the antiquity and significance of the finds.

In 1948, John C. Trever, then acting director of the American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR) in Jerusalem, acquired permission to photograph three of the four manuscripts in the possession of the St. Mark's Monastery: a complete manuscript of the book of Isaiah, the Manual of Discipline (now called the Rule of the Community), and a commentary on the book of Habakkuk. The fourth scroll, which could not be opened at that time, later became known as the Genesis Apocryphon. Later that year, Sukenik published preliminary surveys of the three scrolls he had obtained: the War Scroll, a Psalms-like composition known as the Thanksgiving Scroll (Hodayot), and a second copy of Isaiah.

Little research could be done at the time of discovery due to the hostilities between the newly founded State of Israel and its Arab neighbors. In light of the unstable situation, Mar Samuel chose to remove his precious scrolls from the country. Bringing them to the United States, he advertised them for sale in the Wall Street Journal. In 1954, Yigael Yadin, the son of Sukenik, arranged to purchase the scrolls for the State of Israel, through an American mediator, for $250,000. In 1955 Yadin brought the scrolls to Israel.

For a full chronology of the Qumran discoveries, see the Timelines tab. The following is a brief overview:
1947: Cave one is accidentally found
1949: Cave one is identified by archaeologists and excavated under the supervision of Roland de Vaux
1951-6: Five seasons of archaeological work at the Qumran site
1952-6: Ten more manuscript caves are discovered
1955-8: Archaeological search between Qumran and Ein-Feshkha
1967: The Temple Scroll is acquired by Yigael Yadin

From 1948 to 1967, the Jordan Department of Antiquities had political responsibility for excavations and scroll research, apart from those scrolls which were in the possession of the Hebrew University. The scroll fragments were housed in the Palestine Archaeological Museum, also known as the Rockefeller Museum (for John D. Rockefeller, Jr., who originally funded its establishment). At first, the team responsible for publication of the Dead Sea Scrolls consisted of De Vaux�s colleagues at the École Biblique�Pierre Benoit, Jozef T. Milik, and Maurice Baillet. The discovery of an enormous number of fragments from Cave 4 led to the formation of the so-called �International Team��Milik was joined by his compatriot Jean Starcky, Americans Frank Moore Cross and Patrick Skehan, John Marco Allegro and John Strugnell from Britain, and Claus-Hunno Hunzinger from Germany.

In the aftermath of the 1967 Six Day War, control over the Rockefeller Museum passed to Israel. At first, Israel retained the status quo, leaving responsibility for the publication of the scrolls in the hands of the original scrolls team, and accepting the exclusion of Jewish and Israeli scholars. As the delay in publication began to arouse increasing conflict and controversy, however, the publication team was expanded (see Publication and Controversy). In 1980, Emanuel Tov and Elisha Qimron became the first Israeli scholars to work on the scrolls. John Strugnell, as head of the international team from 1986�1990, expanded the team still further to include a number of younger scholars. In 1990, Emanuel Tov became editor-in-chief for the scrolls publication project, increasing the number of scholars on the scrolls team to more than sixty, and seeing the project through to its completion. 2008 saw the virtual completion of the 40-volume official publication series, Discoveries in the Judean Desert (DJD) published by Oxford University Press (volume 32 is soon to be released).

For more information on published Dead Sea texts and translations, see Scholarly Editions and Translations.

More Info

The bulk of the controversy surrounding the publication of the scrolls related to the thousands of fragments from Cave 4. Volume 1 of the Discoveries in the Judaean Desert (DJD) series, featuring Cave 1 materials located in the Rockefeller Museum, had appeared in a reasonably timely fashion in 1955. By 1956, official publications of the other major writings from Cave 1 had been produced. 1QIsaa, 1QS (the Rule of the Community), and 1QpHab (The Pesher on Habakkuk) had appeared in M. Burrows, The Dead Sea Scrolls of St. Mark’s Monastery, vols. 1-2 (1950-1951); 1QIsab, 1QM (the War Scroll), and 1QHa (the Thanksgiving Scroll, or Hodayot)were published by E. L. Sukenik, as The Dead Sea Scrolls of the Hebrew University (1955); and an edition of the Genesis Apocryphon was published by N. Avigad and Y. Yadin (A Genesis Apocryphon: A Scroll From the Wilderness of Judaea [1956]). The texts from the “minor caves”—caves 2, 3, 5, 6, 7 and 10—were published in 1962, in 2 volumes, DJD 3 and 3a.

However, the Cave 4 materials entrusted to the “international team” were slow to see the light. The first volume of Cave 4 material, DJD volume 5, was published by J. M. Allegro with A. A. Anderson in 1968. Rather than following Allegro’s example, the additional members of the team criticized his work. While publication proceeded at a negligible rate, scholars outside of the official team were not even permitted access to photographs of the unpublished material, as team members sought to maintain editorial control of the material. The Biblical Archaeology Review, under the leadership of its editor Hershel Shanks, spearheaded a campaign for open access to the as yet unpublished scrolls.

A significant breakthrough in the efforts to gain wider access to the scrolls was achieved in 1991, when B. Z. Wacholder and M. G. Abegg published a computer-generated reconstruction of 17 texts on the basis of a handwritten concordance that had been produced by the international team for internal use. In that same year, it was disclosed that a duplicate set of Dead Sea Scrolls photographs had been deposited for safekeeping in the Huntington Library in San Marino California, and microfilms of those photos were made available. Also, a facsimile edition of photos of previously unpublished material, especially texts from Cave 4, was published by R. Eisenman and J. M. Robinson. The Biblical Archaeology Society (publisher of the BAR) was instrumental in both of these publication projects.

Meanwhile, under the editorship of Emanuel Tov and with the support of the IAA, the unpublished scroll fragments in Jerusalem were redistributed to a larger scholarly team in order to accelerate publication, and the ban on access to the original fragments was lifted.

At this time, the publication of the known scrolls and fragments is virtually complete in the DJD series; photographs, transcriptions and translations of the scrolls are available to scholars and the general public in both print and electronic media (see Scholarly Editions and Translations). In the most recent effort to broaden access to the Scrolls, the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) has embarked on an ambitious “Scrolls Digitization Project,” the goal of which is the creation of an online database of state-of-the-art photographs of the entire Scrolls corpus, along with transcriptions and translations of the material.

The texts and translations of the Dead Sea Scrolls are now available in a variety of print and electronic editions.

Critical Editions

Early Editions:

Millar Burrows, The Dead Sea Scrolls of St. Mark's Monastery (2 vols.; New Haven: The American Schools of Oriental Research, 1950–1951). English edition; second volume has transcription of the Hebrew text with English translation.

Jacob Licht, The Thanksgiving Scroll: A Scroll from the Wilderness of Judaea (Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1957). Hebrew transcription, introduction, and notes.

Jacob Licht, The Rule Scroll: A Scroll from the Wilderness of Judaea (1QS, 1QSa, 1QSb) (Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1965). Hebrew transcription, introduction, and notes.

E. L. Sukenik, The Dead Sea Scrolls of the Hebrew University (Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik and the Hebrew University, 1954; The Hebrew University Magnes Press, 1955). 1954 edition is Hebrew; 1955 edition has English introduction.

Nahman Avigad and Yigael Yadin, A Genesis Apocryphon: A Scroll From the Wilderness of Judaea (Jerusalem: The Hebrew University Magnes Press and the Shrine of the Book, 1956; published separately in Hebrew and English).

Yadin, Yigael. The Scroll of the War of the Sons of Light against the Sons of Darkness (Hebrew edition: Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1955; English edition: trans. Batya and Chaim Rabin; London: Oxford University Press, 1962). Transcription, introduction and notes.

Current Editions and Series:

Discoveries in the Judaean Desert Series (DJD): This series of critical editions of most of the scroll fragments features transcriptions, translations (English or French), and photographs of the scrolls. The photographic plates use the photographs taken for the Palestinian Archeological Museum; the plates for each volume were produced from full-size sharpened and digitized PAM negatives. The series includes over 900 hundred individual texts. The first DJD volume appeared in 1955. Emanuel Tov of the Hebrew University serves as the current editor-in-chief; although the 39–volume series was virtually completed in 2001, a few scheduled volumes plus re-editions of older volumes are still in the pipeline.

The Princeton Theological Seminary Dead Sea Scrolls Project, general editor James H. Charlesworth. These volumes present new critical editions, commentaries, and English translations:
James H. Charlesworth, et al. The Dead Sea Scrolls: Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek Texts with English Translations (Tübingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 1994– ).

Ben Zion Wacholder and Martin G. Abegg Jr. (eds.), A Preliminary Edition of the Unpublished Dead Sea Scrolls, The Hebrew and Aramaic Texts from Cave Four, Fascicles I-IV (Biblical Archaeological Society: Washington D.C., 1991–1996). This edition of at the time unpublished scroll fragments was constructed from the Dead Sea Scrolls Concordance compiled in the early years of scrolls research. Its usefulness has largely been superseded by later editions and electronic tools, but it still may contain valuable readings.

Text Editions Outside of the DJD Series

Carol Newsom, Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice: A Critical Edition (Harvard Semitic Studies 27; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1985). Critical edition of the Hebrew text with English translations, introduction and notes.

Elisha Qimron, The Temple Scroll: A Critical Edition with Extensive Reconstructions (Beer Sheva: Ben-Gurion University of the Negev; Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1996). Reconstruction of the Hebrew text with English introduction and notes.

Eileen M. Schuller, Non-Canonical Psalms from Qumran: A Pseudepigraphic Collection (Harvard Semitic Studies 28; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1986). Critical edition of 4Q380 and 381 with English translations, introduction and notes.

Yigael Yadin, Jonas C. Greenfield, Ada Yardeni, and Baruch A. Levine, The Documents from the Bar Kokhba Period in the Cave of Letters: Hebrew, Aramaic, and Nabatean-Aramaic Papyri (2 vols.; Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, Hebrew University Institute of Archaeology, Israel Museum Shrine of the Book, 2002). Critical edition of the texts, with English introduction and commentary; volume 2 has photographic plates.

Yadin, Yigael. The Temple Scroll (3 vols.; Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1977–1983; original Hebrew edition: 3 vols.; Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, Hebrew University Institute of Archaeology, Israel Museum Shrine of the Book, 1977). Critical edition of the Hebrew text, with English introduction and commentary, and photographic plates.

Photographic Editions

Eisenman R.H. & Robinson, J.M. (eds.), A Facsimile Edition of the Dead Sea Scrolls, Vol.Vol. I+II (Biblical Archaeology Society: Washington, D.C. 1991). Produced by the Biblical Archeology Society from a set of small-format reproductions of many photographs from the PAM series. Often the plates’ small size makes them difficult to read. The DJD volumes have replaced much of the usefulness of this publication.

Emanuel Tov, with the collaboration of Stephen J. Pfann (eds.) under the auspices of the Israel Antiquities Authority, The Dead Sea Scrolls on Microfiche and its Companion Volume (Brill: Leiden, 1995): The comprehensive facsimile edition is the published version of the Microfiche Edition Masters (see below). The Companion Volume, also available separately, contains articles, both technical and anecdotal, by expert scholars about the photographs at the Rockefeller Museum.

Brooke, G.J. with Bond, H.K.(eds.), The Allegro Qumran Collection: Supplement to the ‘Dead Sea Scrolls on Microfiche’ (Brill: Leiden, 1996).

The Microfiche Edition Masters: Co-edited by Emanuel Tov and Stephen Pfann, the collection is a set of microfiches produced from the original negatives by P. Moerkerk, a photographer from publishers E. Brill/IDC under the auspices of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA). The microfiches include the whole collection of negatives stored at the IAA.
Due to the method by which the microfiches were made, and the fact that they were done on Fuji II high Resolution microfiche film, information preserved only in the layered emulsion is preserved on the microfiche. The masters are kept with E. Brill/IDC in the Netherlands.

English translations (NB: most of these volumes include only the nonbiblical texts found at Qumran)

Martin G. Abegg, Jr., Peter Flint, and Eugene Ulrich.The Dead Sea Scrolls Bible: The Oldest Known Bible. (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1999). Translations of all the biblical texts found at Qumran, arranged in canonical order.

Florentino García Martínez, ed. The Dead Sea Scrolls Translated: The Qumran Texts in English (2d ed.; Leiden: Brill, 1996).

Florentino García Martínez and Eibert J. C. Tigchelaar (eds.), The Dead Sea Scrolls Study Edition (2 vols.; Brill: Leiden, 1997–1998). Hebrew text (drawn from published editions and published corrections) with facing English translations.

Michael Wise, Martin G. Abegg Jr., and Edward Cook, (eds.), The Dead Sea Scrolls – A New Translation (HarperSanFrancisco: San Francisco, 1996; 2d edition 2005).

Donald Parry and Emanual Tov, (eds.), The Dead Sea Scrolls Reader (6 volumes; Brill: Leiden. 2004–2005). Hebrew texts (mainly drawn from the DJD series) with English translations, classified by genre.

Geza Vermes. The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English (New York: Penguin, 2004).

Translations into other Languages

Torleif Elgvin ed., Dǿdehavsrullene (The Dead Sea Scrolls in Norwegian) (Oslo: De Norske Bokklubbene, 2004).

Bodil Ejrnaes, Søren Holst, and Mogens Müller, M., Dǿdehavsskrifterne og de Antikke Kilder Om Essaeerne (2d rev. and expanded ed.; Copenhagen: ANIS, 2003). Danish translation.

Electronic Editions

The Dead Sea Scrolls Electronic Library (Leiden: Brill, 2006) (http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=210&pid=24612), prepared by the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, under the editorship of Emanuel Tov, offers searchable images and transcriptions of all the published nonbiblical texts, tagged for morphological analysis, along with English translations.
http://www.accordancebible.com/: Accordance offers, in separate modules, tagged databases of the biblical and nonbiblical Qumran texts, both prepared by Martin Abegg, Jr.
http://www.olivetree.com/store/product.php?productid=17117:: OliveTree offers the Accordance (Abegg) Qumran database of nonbiblical scrolls for mobile PDA and cell phones.
http://www.logos.com/products/prepub/details/3455:: Logos offers a tagged database of the nonbiblical Qumran scrolls (prepared by Martin Abegg, Jr.), as well as an electronic version of the Dead Sea Scrolls Study Edition, by Florentino Garcia Martinez and Eibert J.C. Tigchelaar. The company is about to release a separate database of the biblical scrolls, prepared by Stephen Pfann.

Millar Burrows, The Dead Sea Scrolls. New York: Viking, 1955.
Philip R. Davies, George J. Brooke, and Phillip R. Callaway, The Complete World of the Dead Sea Scrolls. London: Thames and Hudson, 2002.
Harry Thomas Frank, “Discovering the Scrolls,” in Understanding the Dead Sea Scrolls: A Reader from the Biblical Archaeology Review. Edited by Hershel Shanks. New York: Random House, 1992).
Yigael Yadin, The Message of the Scrolls. New York: Universal Library, 1957/1962.