The American Jewish Archives Journal, Volume LXI 2009, Number 1

Yigael Yadin. Yadin was calling from the office of the Israeli Consul-General,
Avraham Harman, in New York, and he needed Orlinsky’s immediate help.
On 1 June it had been brought to Yadin’s attention that the four scrolls from St.
Mark’s were for sale in the United States. A classified advertisement in the Wall
Street Journal listed a post office box and, knowing that the metropolitan would
not sell the scrolls to an Israeli, had a third party contact the seller. Now they
needed an unknown individual to examine the scrolls first-hand to ensure their
authenticity. Yadin knew Orlinsky for various reasons, and they had become
friendly through Orlinsky’s efforts to found the American Friends of the Israel
Exploration Society in 1951. Since Orlinsky had published serious studies of
the Isaiah Scroll from St. Mark’s, he was a perfect candidate for the job. Taking
on the pseudonym Mr. Green, Orlinsky went to New York’s Waldorf-Astoria
Hotel, where there was a branch of the Chemical Bank and Trust Co. He was
taken to the vault, where he examined the scrolls. First he examined the Isaiah
text, then Pesher Habakkuk, and finally, the Manual of Discipline (Rule of the
Community). A fourth scroll, identified then as the Lamech scroll and published
later as the Genesis Apocryphon, was in the vault but in too poor condition to
be unrolled. Orlinsky would later report to Yadin,
I made a detailed inspection of the scrolls and compared them with the official
reproduction published by the American Schools of Oriental Research, New
Haven, edited by Professor Millar Burrows. 154 I am satisfied that the scrolls
… are the authentic 4 DSS referred to and reproduced in the a/m work by
Professor Burrows and that they are complete. 155
In early 1956 Orlinsky explained what he did somewhat more explicitly
to a Toronto journalist. Particularly noteworthy is that he carried out his job
of examining and handling the physical manuscripts without dealing with the
issue of dating the material:
I had nothing to do with “authenticating” the Scrolls for—and purchased
by—the Israel Government. What I was asked to do, and what I did, was to
examine the Scrolls very carefully to make sure what the archbishop of the St.
Marks Convent was offering for sale, was exactly what the Israel Government
was ready to purchase; in other words, to make sure that no kind of substitute
was being introduced. The matter of the authenticity of the Scrolls was never
really doubted by anyone; it is the matter of date and authorship, and such
other scholarly problems that have constituted the several and important
points of difference among scholars. 156
Following the examination, Orlinsky left the hotel and called an unlisted
number for the consulate from the pay phone using the code-word le-hayim
to indicate that the scrolls were authentic. Upon returning to the consulate by
taxi, he signed a legal statement Harman and Yadin had prepared that swore to
Optimistic, Even with the Negatives: HUC-JIR and the Dead Sea Scrolls, 1948–1993 • 23