064 In December 1993, when Pierre Bikai, director of the the American Center of Oriental Research (ACOR) in Amman, Jordan, and his team discovered a cache of burnt papyrus scrolls in a Byzantine church in Petra, he wanted to avoid the kind of...

061 In 2011, more than 60 years after the first seven Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered by the Bedouin in what became known as Qumran Cave 1, a splendid new edition of the Great Isaiah Scroll—1QIsaa, in more technical language—has been published...

062 The Dead Sea Scrolls have been liberated. The time has now come to preserve the Dead Sea Scrolls. Whether the scrolls received worse treatment during the 2,000 years they spent in the caves than they have since being taken out of the caves...

063 There, on a moonlit night beside the ruins of Qumran, was the voice of Yigael Yadin, Israel’s most illustrious archaeologist, dead these 13 years, reading in the original language from a letter by Shimon bar Kosiba, better known as Bar-Kokhba...

025 If you have a Dead Sea Scroll for sale, you should get in touch with Martin Schøyen (pronounced Skoo-yen) in Oslo. He is a prime prospect. He already owns several Dead Sea Scroll fragments—making him one of the few individuals in the world (I...

054 Did you ever wonder what the dean of Harvard Divinity School does with his time? He attends meetings—all day—at least when a senior member of his faculty gives a virulently anti-Semitic interview to the press. On October 28, 1990, chief Dead...

065 The Jerusalem court has spoken: Elisha Qimron of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev owns the copyright on the reconstructed text of MMT, one of the most important, and still unpublished, Dead Sea Scrolls. Now the scholarly community will have...

023 Were it not for the efforts of the man who got Jerry Falwell started in television, the famous Dead Sea Scroll known as the “Temple Scroll” might never have come to light. At least that is the story according to Reverend Joe Uhrig, now...

030 The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls changed many lives—arguably, including mine (as editor of BAR). As the cornerstone of our observance of the 60th anniversary of the scrolls’ discovery, eight leading Dead Sea Scroll scholars have agreed...

049 Will the Dead Sea Scrolls and the ruins of Qumran, adjacent to the caves where the scrolls were found, be given to the Palestinians? As the Israelis and Palestinians struggle slowly and painfully toward some kind of accommodation that...

066 A book that will soon be available in the United States was recently published in England under the title The Dead Sea Scroll Deception by Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh (Jonathan Cape, 1991).1 The book’s thesis is that the Vatican...

096 According to a report issued by the Israel Antiquities Authority, five scholars are now engaged full time in preparing Dead Sea Scrolls for publication. Approximately 30 others are spending part time on the task. “A constant effort is being...

022 One of the world’s preeminent Dead Sea Scroll authorities, who at one time had full access to all the fragments, including those still unpublished, has roundly condemned the continuing delay in releasing the full texts. Speaking at a...

056 A new timetable for the publication of still-secret Dead Sea Scroll fragments is being negotiated between Israel’s Department of Antiquities and the scholar-editors to whom publication was assigned 35 years ago. Fragments of approximately 400...

055 At long last, significant progress is being made to assure publication of the substantial batch of unpublished Dead Sea Scroll texts.a And we may soon learn just how substantial this batch is; finally, after more than three decades, a...

018 They will never do it. They will never do it because they cannot do it. They have failed—utterly and completely. The time for equivocation, explanation and apology has passed. It is now time to face the situation squarely and unflinchingly:...

036 The monopoly over access to the Dead Sea Scrolls was broken in 1991. One of the key events in that breakup was the publication of Dead Sea Scroll texts that had been reconstructed by computer from a concordance. We will here detail this...

026 Qumran, that desolate, supposedly monastery-like site with its ritual baths and communal dining room overlooking the Dead Sea, had nothing to do with the Dead Sea Scrolls found in nearby caves, according to a just-released study. Your vision...

040 Harvard professor John Strugnell was chief editor of the official Dead Sea Scroll editorial team from 1987 until he was dismissed in late 1990, after giving an anti-Semitic interview to Israeli journalist Avi Katzman, in Ha’aretz,...

024 It is time to honor Jozef Milik. A former Polish priest now living in Paris, Milik is an original member of the small Dead Sea Scroll publication team designated in the early 1950s. Called by Time magazine “the fastest man with a...