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

Shanks’s intuition about the general situation was accurate. The scholars
were caught. If they wanted those who had access to share what they knew,
they could not attack them for not releasing the material. Certainly it must have
been a frustrating situation. The rumors Wacholder heard in 1989 of others
selectively gaining access to the materials must have been all that much more
frustrating, and that he saw them as an opportunity to have HUC-JIR open
access to their negatives to him is certainly understandable.
But, Broshi denied the rumors. His response, which he claimed to have
penned within a half hour of receiving Zafren’s letter that suggested that the
College would be breaking the contract, came with an implicit threat: “I am
afraid that a decision like this will create a scandal, I do not see how you could
defend yourself.” 408
Gottschalk and Zafren fundamentally agreed that the fact that the original
negatives had been sent based on Gottschalk’s agreement not to use the material
for a purpose other than study gave them the unilateral right to release the
material to their staff and students. What remained was the question of whether
they should do so, as Zafren noted: “The bottom-line may be that we have a
‘legal’ basis to act unilaterally, but this won’t resolve the question of whether
we want to do what the Shrine of the Book asks us not to do.” 409 They decided
to approach Broshi for the rights to make the negatives of already published
material available. 410 The motivation for releasing already published material is
unclear. If it was already published, who needed to see the negatives? One may
suppose that the negatives included some images of previously published scrolls
that had not appeared and that, if part of the collection was made available, the
rest might soon follow. In response to this approach to Broshi, the board of the
Shrine of the Book had Harman reply to Gottschalk. The reply indicated that
the board was only the trustee for the original seven scrolls acquired by Sukenik
and Yadin and not any of the fragments. 411 The College could use negatives of
the original scrolls. By contrast, permission to use images of the fragments would
require permission of Amir Drori, the director of the Division of Antiquities of
the Israel Ministry of Education and Culture. 412 Harman copied Drori on the
letter; Drori concurred with Harman’s assessment and emphasized that no use
whatsoever could be made of the negatives of unpublished material without the
permission of the IAA and the editor responsible for the fragments. 413 Harman’s
letter highlights an important issue. Part of the difficulty HUC-JIR and others
faced by wanting the release of the scrolls was that it was never clear who had
control of any particular piece. The players were numerous: the IAA, the board of
the Shrine of the Book, Broshi, and the editors individually and collectively.
During this same period a potential ally contacted HUC-JIR. At the end
of December, Shanks contacted the College for an explanation of its agreement
regarding the negatives in its collection. Shanks’s particular interest was
in whether there was a written agreement between the College and Israeli
Optimistic, Even with the Negatives: HUC-JIR and the Dead Sea Scrolls, 1948–1993 • 59