Dead Sea Scroll Mystery
Hershel Shanks’s First Person in the May/June 2014 issue of BAR
Hershel Shanks
May 30, 2014
22 Comments
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This is about what may be the last remaining mystery of the saga of the Dead Sea Scrolls: One of the critical breakthroughs that freed the Dead Sea Scrolls from the small publication team that had been assigned to publish them and failed to do so in 40 years was BAR’s 1991 two-volume publication of thousands of photographs of still-secret scroll fragments from Qumran Cave 4.
Eisenman
I think I now know where they got them. But my answer only adds to the mystery. I have often asked Eisenman (who brought Robinson into the project) where the pictures came from, but he has steadfastly declined to tell me. I had always thought they came from a source in the Israeli government.
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Some recent correspondence with a California lawyer, William Cox, proved me wrong. Eisenman did not get them from a source in the Israeli government.
Cox
I always assumed that Cox somehow represented Eisenman; that is, that he was Eisenman’s lawyer. But in recent correspondence, Cox told me that Eisenman was never his client.
Cox’s letter goes on: “The more interesting question is, where did I get the pictures?”
Qimron
But where did Cox get them? That was—“and remains,” he wrote me—a matter of lawyer’s privilege. That is, communications between lawyer and client are privileged, so clients can talk freely to their attorneys without fear of their disclosing what the client said. No one can force a lawyer to divulge what his client has told him.
So, at least for now, William Cox, an old man who has written an as-yet-unpublished book of philosophical peregrinations titled The Book of Mankind, intends to take his privileged secret to the grave.
Visit the BAS Dead Sea Scrolls page for dozens of additional posts on this priceless collection of ancient manuscripts.
Notes
a. See “Giving Credit Where Credit Is Due—New Study Shows That John Strugnell Substantially Reconstructed and Deciphered MMT,” BAR 27:02; “Qimron Threatens to Sue Garcia Martinez for Character Defamation,” BAR 29:01.
1. A Facsimile Edition of the Dead Sea Scrolls, vol. 1, Prepared with an Introduction and Index by Robert H. Eisenman and James M. Robinson (Washington, DC: Biblical Archaeology Society, 1991), p. xi.
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Sad to see that politics (“the devil) controls everything in the industrial world, even “sacred texts”.
Where there’s corruption, there’s lawyers and bureaucrats.
Where there’s lawyers and bureaucrats, there’s lies and deceit, cover-ups and sordid gain.
The real question people should be asking is:
What’s the money trail involved in this scheme?
“There is nothing new under the sun.”
Love of money… The root of all evil.
The real disgrace about the handling of the Scrolls and their rescue by Dr. Eisenman is Hershel Shanks’ unprincipled reaction to what was accomplished by a very courageous man.
Ernst is right. Nine fragments of New Testament books were discovered in Qumran Cave 7, these being 7Q4 – 1 Tim 3:16-4:3; 7Q5 – Mark 6:52-53; 7Q6, 1 – Mark 4:28; 7Q8 – James 1:23-24; 7Q6, 2 – Acts 27:38; 7Q9 – Romans 5:11-12; 7Q7 – Mark 12:17; 7Q10 – 2 Peter 1:15; and 7Q15 -Mark 6:48. The significance of the discovery is that the caves of Qumran were sealed up in AD 68 when the area was overrun by the Roman 10th Legion. They were clearly written out before AD 68, and were copies made from even earlier exemplars. And yet no one seems to have noticed them. Most strange! I wonder why it is?
much ado about nothing, many people in the field know how these photos got into the hands of individuals in the US.
Well, as you are aware; there were two triangles involved. The first was with Mrs. Elizabeth Hay Bechtel of the privately owned and powerful Bechtel Group, along with the Israeli government and the actual photographer who photographed the manuscripts while in employ of the Huntington Library. The second triangle consists of Dr. William A. Moffett, the director of the library; whom was by then, in actual possession of the photographs, Professor Robert H. Eisenman and William J. Cox, the attorney who “secretly represented an “undisclosed client”, pro bono,” for the transfer to your entity; and happens to be well qualified for this sort of thing. So, if your questions is : who authorized the transfer of a “copy” to Mr. Cox; perhaps it was then believed to be not needed; and a premature attempt to circumvent what unfortunately did actually happen between you and Professor Elisha Qimron. I then see the “trial” as a result of Israeli “rage” over a perceived betrayal.
William,
What is your source for these New Testament fragments in Cave 7? I have never heard this before.
Hi, Paul. The references are as follows: O’Callaghan, Jose. `Les Papyrus de la Grotte 7 de Qumran.’ Nouvelle Revue Theologique. Vol 95 (1973). pp. 187-195. O’Callaghan, Jose. Los papiros griegos de la cueva 7 de Qumran. 1974. Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos. Madrid. (This is O’Callaghan’s monograph on the New Testament fragments of Qumran Cave 7). O’Callaghan, Jose. `The Identifications of 7Q.’ Aegyptus. Anno 56, No, 1-4. (Gennaio-Decembre 1976). pp. 287-294. Thiede, Carsten Peter. The Earliest Gospel Manuscript? 1992. Paternoster Press. Thiede, Carsten Peter. Rekindling the Word. 1995. Gracewing. (pp. 189-204). Thiede, Carsten Peter. The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Jewish Origins of Christianity. 2000. Lion Publishing. Oxford. But see especially: Dou, Albert. `El calculo des probabilidades y las posibles identificaciones de 7Q5′, pp. 116-139 of O’Callaghan’s Los Primeros Testimonios del Nuovo Testamento, Madrid, 1995. Dou’s conclusion is that there is less than 1 chance in 900,000,000,000 of the 7Q5 fragment not being Mark 6:52-53. The fragments are never mentioned by the critics, of course, and Bible apologists are therefore not aware of them. But they do exist, and are housed today in the Rockefeller Museum in Jerusalem.
Thanks William, printed out your list……..Paul
As a layman, just pondering what I am reading, What is it about these scroll bits that are so secret? Mr Cox is said to probably take his secret to the grave. What secret? What does this lawyer-client privilege have to do with the scrolls. Were they stolen from someone, so that the client needed a lawyer? If they are of historical value, they should be public, and the history of their discovery and subsequent photographs should also be public.
I can’t believe that subterfuge, or a monetary consideration, should, or could, delay, or interrupt such a historical phenomenon.