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

The team’s final reaction came with the most serious threat. In response to
the announcement of the publication, Emile Puech, a member of the editorial
committee, told a Chicago Tribune reporter that they would sue. 493 Although
Wacholder and Abegg’s agreement with Shanks did not come with an offer of
legal protection, Shanks had given them the name of a Washington, DC law
firm that would agree to take their case pro bono if a legal challenge was raised
to their text edition. 494 However, a trial never became an issue because news of
another infringement of the editors’ rights inspired by Wacholder and Abegg
was soon to break.
Wacholder and Abegg mounted their own public defense to these challenges.
First, they argued for the ethics of their actions. Wacholder was concerned that
part of the reason for the monopoly was to keep Jewish scholars out. This he
ascertained from Strugnell’s comments about Judaism and the fact that, despite
Israeli control, the core of non-Jewish editors had remained in place without
interference since the capture of the materials. Based on his reconstructions,
he told The Jerusalem Post that, in contrast to accusations that publication was
being delayed because the scrolls contained material that might undermine the
theological positions of rabbinic Judaism or Christianity, he found no evidence
in the scrolls of anything that might undermine them. 495 Further, Abegg argued
that the ability to reconstruct the scrolls from the concordance made in the
1960s suggested that preliminary editions of the scrolls could have been made
available then, too. The scrolls were already generally deciphered, or the concordance
would not have been possible. What was unethical, Abegg asserted,
was the unnecessary hoarding of the scrolls for so many decades. 496 Some of
the scholars feared that erroneous material in the reconstructions would be
used as the basis for numerous scholarly treatises and dissertations. Wacholder,
however, played down those fears: “These scholars, with all their eminence and
the best ability, have themselves introduced misconceptions.… They will have
to eat their words, and these texts will show it.” 497
Wacholder and Abegg did not go undefended by outsiders either. No
less than the editors of The New York Times took up their cause. In the days
immediately following the announcement of the publication and the outcry
from the editorial team they wrote:
Some on the committee might be tempted to charge the Cincinnati scholars
with piracy. On the contrary, Mr. Wacholder and Mr. Abegg are to be
applauded for their work—and for sifting through layer upon layer of obfuscation.
The committee with its obsessive secrecy and cloak and dagger scholarship,
long ago exhausted its credibility with scholars and laymen alike.
The two Cincinnatians seem to know what the scroll committee forgot: that the
scrolls and what they say about the common roots of Christianity and Rabbinic
Judaism belong to civilization, not to a few sequestered professors. 498
68 • American Jewish Archives Journal