January 13, 2006

Scholarship and Authority in Israel

By HERSHEL SHANKS

With the recent arrest in Israel of a distinguished archaeologist at Bar-Ilan University, a second battle over the Dead Sea Scrolls has erupted that may have serious implications for the fate of numerous fragments of 2,000-year-old texts that are still undiscovered, unpublished, or in private hands. Some are at risk of disintegrating; some are not even known to scholars.

The original Dead Sea Scrolls, discovered in the 1940s and 50s, included the earliest known copies of the Hebrew

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