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In January, 1948, Sukenik received one of Samuel’s scrolls, a copy of the Isaiah scroll,
which he was able to inspect. Although he was interested in purchasing the four scrolls, he
couldn’t raise the money necessary to make the transaction.
Samuel then contacted the William F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in
Jerusalem, where the scrolls were inspected by John C. Trever and William H. Brownlee, who
felt they were as old, if not older, than the 2nd century Nash Papyrus fragment, which up to then,
was the oldest known example of Biblical Hebrew. A set of prints were forwarded to Professor
William Foxwell Albright at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, who was the
leading Hebrew epigraphist in the world. He dated the material back to 100 BC. Upon
examination of all these Hebrew and Aramaic scrolls and fragments which have been discovered
at Qumran, it is generally accepted that they were written between 250 BC and 68 AD, when the
Romans destroyed the Qumran settlement.
The scrolls were taken to a bank in Beirut, and then in January, 1949, to a New York City
bank vault. Up to 1954, only three of the scrolls had been published. Samuel, labeled a
‘smuggler,’ was anxious to sell the scrolls, and would not allow the fourth to be published until
all of them had been purchased.
In February, 1949, Gerald Lankester Harding, director of the Department of Antiquities for
Transjordan and Arab Palestine; and Father Roland de Vaux, director of the Dominicancontrolled
Ecole Biblique in the Jordanian sector of East Jerusalem, went to the cave at Qumran,
where they found the remains of 30 identifiable texts, and a number of unidentifiable fragments.
Harding made it known that he was interested in all subsequent finds made by the Ta’amireh
tribe. They would sell the results of their excavation to Kando, who would then sell the items to
Harding. Meanwhile, de Vaux, Harding, and a group of fifteen workers continued to excavate
around Qumran until 1956, where they uncovered the buildings of what they felt were an Essene
community.
For nearly two weeks in mid-March, 1952, de Vaux, three members of the Ecole Biblique,
William Reed (director of the Albright Institute), and 24 Bedouins under the supervision of three
Jordanian and Palestinian archaeologists, embarked on an effort to conduct a survey of all the
caves in the area. This survey indicated the existence of 40 caves, and the umbrella term of the
Dead Sea Scrolls refers to the scrolls and fragments that were found in eleven of the caves.
In September, 1952, in Cave 4, located about 50 feet away from some of the Qumran ruins,
the largest number of scroll fragments were discovered– the remains of over 500 different
scrolls.
By 1959, all the scroll fragments were kept in a room known as the ‘Scrollery’ in the
Rockefeller Museum (formerly known as the Palestine Archaeological Museum), which had
been built with funds provided by John D. Rockefeller. The Museum was run by an international
Board of Trustees, and later fell under the control of the Jordanian government. After the Six
Day War in June, 1967, when Israel took over control of the entire city of Jerusalem, the contents
of the Museum were considered spoils of war, so the Israeli government became the guardian of
the fragments.
The Museum contained laboratories, photographic facilities, and the Department of
Antiquities, however, the headquarters of the entire operation was actually located at the Ecole
Biblique which contained a research library totally dedicated to Qumran research, which was not
open to the public. They also published two journals, the Revue Biblique, printed since 1892, and
the Revue de Qumran, started in 1958 to publish information on the scrolls.
This may be one of the keys to understanding what may be going on here behind the scenes.