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.THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS w. R. TAYLOR THE various scrolls and fragments discovered recently in a cave at the north-western end of the Dead Sea are now by fairly general agreement designated "The Dead·Sea Scrolls." For reasons which will emerge in the course of this paper they constitute -one of the most important discoveries of ancient manuscripts in modern times, and, unquestionably, the most important discovery ever made in Hebrew manuscripts. It is also of special archaeological significance that they are the first ancient manuscripts to be found in Palestine. One might compare with them such phenomenal finds as the discovery of the Codex Sinaiticus by Tischendor£ one hundred years ago and that of the Chester Beatty Biblical Papyri in 1931, but the contributions of these Greek manuscripts to their field of literature, great as they are recognized to be, are relatively of less fundamental importance than those .of these latest documents. The full account of the discovery and the transactions which followed it cannot yet·be told definitively; certain of the details are still obscure and may always remain uncertain. But the major facts are sufficiently dear. Apparently early in the spring of 1947 some Bedouins of the Ta'amira tribe chanced on a cave to the west of t~e Red Sea at its northern end near '.Ain Feshkha, and, entering the cave, they found some scrolls of leather or parchment lying among the fragments of broken pottery jars and; at least, two whole ones. Four factors seem to have contributed to the preservation of the manuscripts: first, the cave was situated high in the clifflike formation bordering the sea, hardly visible from below, and the approach to it was not easy; secondly, the mouth of the cave had in part collapsed; thirdly, the climatic conditions of the region are not unlike those of Egypt, which favour the preservation of materials against decay; fourthly, the manuscripts had, as it appeared, been wrapped in cloth and placed in jars, and the mouths of the jars had been covered with inverted bowls, as the pottery. remains evidenced. The Bedouins, sensing that what they had found might have value, brought the scrolls to a Muslim sheikh in Bethlehem. The latter, being unable to read them and supposing that the script was Syriac, directed the Bedouins to a Syrian merchant of that town. He, in turn, reported '\ 327 328 THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY the find to the Syrian Orthodox Metropolitan at St. Mark's Convent in Jerusalem, Mar Athanasius Jeshue Samuel, who, after some negotiations, purchased some of the scrolls. A few months later, in January, 1948, others were bought by Professor E. L. Sukenik of the Hebrew University. It is still uncertain whether all of the find is accounted for in the two sales, since we have as yet no complete evidence that the Bedouins or their agents have nothing more of it in their possession. Because of the disturbance in the political conditions in Palestine at the time, neither buyer was aware of the other's purchases, communications between the Arab and· Jewish portions of 1erusalem having become impossible. The Metropolitan, finding that he could not appraise the contents or worth of his scrolls, and being unable to excite interest in them on the part of individuals whom he had consulted, sent them by one of his priests in February, 1948 to the American School of Oriental Research in 1erusalem. Their value was quickly recognized , and they were photographed by a member of the School, Dr. .John C. Trever, who fortunately is an expert in the techniques required. The American School did not purchase any of the scrolls, but advised the Syrians to deposit them for safety outside of Palestine until better conditions should permit their return. In the autumn of 1949 the Metropolitan brought his scrolls to America; and, at present, one of ·them is in the Fogg Museum at Harvard University and the others are temporarily in the custody of Yale University. The insurance value, I am told, is set at one million dollars, twice the amount paid by the British Museum in 1933 in the purchase of the Codex Sinaiticus. The scrolls number eleven...

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