Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Dave Washburn <dwashbur AT nyx.net>]

On Tuesday 24 February 2004 04:37, Peter Kirk wrote:

[snip]
> 1) Despite what Dave says, many of the DSS were kept from the general
> public until 1991. But this was not done by the Israeli government, but
> by a small team of scholars (many of whom expressed openly anti-Semitic
> views) who were the self-appointed guardians of most of the scrolls.
> Only in 1990 was the Israeli Jew Tov appointed to head the team, and in
> 1991 the scrolls were made public. (Summarised from the introduction to
> G. Vermes "The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English").

Peter is correct, of course.  I meant to indicate that *Israel* didn't keep 
the scrolls from anybody.  And they certainly weren't witheld because of some 
perceived support of the Septuagint.  They were held back because a) the 
committee wanted the prestige and publication rights that went with their 
publication (a good example is the recent lawsuit that Qimron won against 
Hershel Shanks), and b) because many of those assigned to edit and publish 
them didn't give them a high priority.  It all came to a head when the BAS 
published its reverse-engineered edition of the scroll texts and the 
Huntington Library decided to make its microfilm set of photos available, 
together with Tov's appointment as editor-in-chief, that everything was 
released and finally published.  But the bottom line is this: if there was 
some kind of "conspiracy" to keep them from the public, it was a conspiracy 
of poor judgment and procrastination, not some heinous Jewish plot to 
suppress the LXX.

I thank Peter for the correction.

-- 
Dave Washburn
http://www.nyx.net/~dwashbur
Learning about Christianity from a non-Christian
is like getting a kiss over the telephone.