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

faculty and students. However, Zafren in particular wanted to make the material
available to scholars everywhere. On the one hand, the issue was simply
doing what was right regarding the role of a library; 420 on the other, he did not
want the College accused of engaging in unfair competition practices. 421 In an
early draft of Gottschalk’s letter to Harman, he responded that he was grateful
that the board of the Shrine of the Book made the “scrolls open for study by
our students and faculty,” 422 while the final letter was changed to read simply
“open for study.” 423 Further, the College requested that positive photographs of
at least these scrolls be provided to HUC-JIR in line with the original letter of
agreement between Harman and Glueck in 1969, just as the College continued
to honor that agreement by not releasing the negatives in its care. 424 By May
1990, no response was received from Harman, 425 and the situation remained
stagnant well into August 1991. 426 Although Shanks shared the news of HUC-
JIR’s collection of negatives in Biblical Archaeology Review (BAR) in late 1989, 427
the College continued to keep the news of their negatives quiet. A synagogue
lecturer approached Zafren for material about the negatives, and while he shared
limited information he noted:
We have never publicly announced that we have these materials nor have we
ever publicly denied it. I suppose it is no longer a secret, and I trust that you will
use your best judgment in introducing information into your discussion.…
and, as you can see, no useful purpose would be served by announcing that
we have unusable material. 428
In any case, limiting the requests for access that the College would have
to deny would only have proven an inconvenience. Shanks hoped that the
publicity would promote a public backlash, that the team of editors, the IAA,
and the institutions housing negatives, would all feel pressured to ensure that
“outside scholars are given access to the unpublished documents for their
own research.” 429
Taking Matters into Their Own Hands: A Professor, a Student,
a Concordance, and a Personal Computer
In 1988 Ben Zion Wacholder approached John Strugnell, the editor-inchief,
for permission to photocopy the Dead Sea Scrolls concordance assembled
in Jerusalem. It is reported that the two scholars were traveling together in a
taxi to give papers at a conference at Haifa University to celebrate the fortieth
anniversary of the scrolls when Wacholder raised the issue of the concordance. 430
The concordance had been compiled on 3 inch by 5 inch cards in the scrollery
in Jerusalem in the late 1950s by Joseph Fitzmyer, Raymond Brown, Willard
Oxtoby, and Javier Teixidor. The fact of its existence had largely been kept a
secret until its limited publication for the editors’ use in 1988. 431 In a mid-
1986 interview that Shanks conducted with Avi Eitan, Israel’s then-director of
Optimistic, Even with the Negatives: HUC-JIR and the Dead Sea Scrolls, 1948–1993 • 61