Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, March 30, 1991 TAG: 9103300327
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: A-9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JESSICA KREIMERMAN/ ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: MADRID, SPAIN LENGTH: Medium
"There is a new orientation from the point of view of all the people involved in the edition of the documents who decipher, describe and publish the material," said Emanuel Tov of Jerusalem's Hebrew University.
Tov, a member of the international editing committee, spoke at a news conference at the close of the International Congress on the Dead Sea Scrolls, in El Escorial, north of Madrid.
The congress drew the largest-ever concentration of scroll editors and analysts, who traded findings, including unpublished texts from different books of the Old Testament.
The leather scrolls were discovered by a Bedouin shepherd in a cave along the Dead Sea in 1947.
They chronicle the life of a splinter Jewish group, the Essenes, between the 3rd century B.C. and 70 A.D. The documents contain a wealth of information on the persecution of Jews by Romans and the emergence of Christianity, and are considered among this century's greatest archaeological finds.
Most of the undamaged texts were published within 20 years of their discovery. More recently, scholars had accused some members of the editing committee of hoarding the remaining texts and delaying their publication.
The former lead editor of the scrolls, Harvard scholar John Strugnell, was replaced in December after making remarks to an Israeli newspaper that some construed as anti-Semitic. The British-born Strugnell was quoted as saying Judaism was "a racist religion...just like Hinduism."
The Israeli Antiquities Authority said Strugnell left for health reasons.
Tov said the old editing team of six "older generation" scholars had been expanded into a team of 25 scholars, "whose average age is 40."
The editors program their interpretations from the scrolls into computers set to print the results. Publication of the final scrolls is expected to be finished by 1996.
The editing committee has rejected accusations of sluggishness in editing the texts, saying they require the utmost care.
But scholars not on the editing committee say more data on the texts is being shared with them, and international congresses are being held with greater frequency, after a period of stagnation from 1967 to 1987.
The 800 manuscripts written by the Essenes record the lives of the tribe and its neighbors. They offer a rare opportunity to study Biblical texts in their original languages, Hebrew and Aramaic, and to compare them with later translations into Greek and other languages.
by CNB