Page 344 - History of The Quranic Text | Kalamullah.Com

324 THE HISTORY OF THE QUR'ANIe TEXT

about exceptional]ewish scholars themselves, are they necessarily considered
qualified to study sensitive material?
The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered beginning in 1947. Though the
main editorial team completed a transcription of the entire text by the
late 1950s (including a full concordance), it maintained secrecy not only
about the transcripts but even regarding their existence. Taking its time
rather generously, the team took forty years to publish a mere twenty
percent of the texts it was responsible for. Hershel Shanks, chief editor of
Biblical Archaeology Review, cornered the director of the Israel Antiquities
Department (lAD) over twenty-five years later in search of this concordance,
only for the director to assure him that he had no knowledge of it."Mean-
while academic circles pressing for a facsimile edition of the unpublished
texts met only an icy, unyielding resolve from the scroll editors to maintain
exclusive control of all findings."
Buckling under incessant criticism General Amir Drori, Director of
the lAD, issued a reluctant press release in September 1991 that pledged
freer access to photographs of the Scrolls. 10

General Drori announced that making the text available to anyone
would put the possibility of a 'definitioe interpretation' at risk... It is worth-
while to recount the cartel's earlier tooth-and-nail efforts to maintain
the secrecy of the unpublished texts. These efforts were accompanied
by a remarkable disdain for anyone who dared question the wisdom of
the cartel. 11

Eugene Ulrich of Notre Dame, among the senior team editors, protested
that, "the editing of the scrolls has in fact suffered not from foot-dragging
but from undue haste" .12 Average university professors were in no position
to competently assess the team's efforts he insisted, echoing the team's re-
peated sentiment that only the official editors, and their students, were
adequate to the task.

"In an interview in Scientific American, [the chief editor] asserted that
Oxford don Geza Vermes was not 'competent' to examine an unpub-
lished scroll because Vermes had not done serious work. Vermes is the

8 Hershel Shanks, "Scholars, Scrolls, Secrets and 'Crimes"', New 'York Times, 7 Sep-
tember 1991, appeared as figure 18 in Eisenman and Robinson, A Facsimile Edition if
the Dead Sea Scrolls, Publisher's Forward, First printing, 1991, p. xli. Note that in the
second (and perhaps in subsequent) printings all these have been omitted.
9 A Facsimile Edition if the Dead Sea Scrolls, Publisher's Forward, p. xxi.
10 ibid, p. xii.
11 ibid, p. xiii. Italics added.
12 ibid, p. xiv.