On the Day February 20 1948

Dead Sea Scrolls Photographed for the First Time

On the Day February 20 1948

Khen Lim

Qumran Caves (Image source: Wikipedia)

“They’re the greatest find of our time. If you love God, if you love history, if you’re a Jew, if you’re a Christian, if you care about the Gospel, if you care about the Bible, there is no greater discovery,” said Peter Flint, professor of religious studies at Trinity Western University in British Columbia, Canada.

Johns Hopkins University professor William F. Albright called them, “the greatest manuscript discovery of modern times.”

On February 20, 1948, the moment the Dead Sea Scrolls were photographed for the first time, that discovery took on the world stage and never left it since then.

The Bedouin connection

The Bedouins, Jum'a Muhammad Khalil and Muhammed edh-Dhib who allegedly discovered the cave (Image source: mybiblicalstudy.weedbly.com)

To begin with, the term ‘Dead Sea Scrolls’ is a broad one. Although it generally refers to scrolls located at Qumran in the Judean Desert near the Dead Sea, scrolls found in other caves at other locations in the broader Judean Desert were also considered and therefore named likewise.

The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, as we know them, began in the period between 1947 and 1956. They were found inside eleven caves and in that period of ten years, archaeologists and local Bedouins collaborated to discover thousands of fragments from almost nine-hundred manuscripts. 

It is believed that these scrolls were written by the Essenes and then concealed in caves at around 66-70AD in the time of the disastrous First Jewish Revolt against the Roman Empire. The Essenes were an ascetic Jewish sect that were apart from the others because of their austere approach to life, which invariably compelled them to live in the desert, away from the others.

Today, of course, the caves in Qumran are located in the West Bank, which Israel captured from Jordan during the 1967 Six-Day War. It goes without saying that Jordan has, from time to time, made claims that the scrolls belong to them.

There are actually two separate but key stories about the Dead Sea Scrolls that I know of. For this sliver of history, we will focus on one but not the other. In this one, it all began in January of 1947 when searching for a stray goat, a Bedouin goat herder was throwing rocks into a cave when he heard a loud crash, sounding like he had accidentally smashed some pottery into shards. 

Fearful that someone might inhabit the cave, he quickly brought his father and brother into the picture and together, they carefully entered the cave. There, tucked away in some rocky fissure overlooking the Dead Sea were a cluster of jars containing scrolls that they had unearthed.

Enter Kando the dealer

Khalil Iskander Shahin (Image source: Biblical Archaeology)

Not realising yet that they had stumbled across the discovery of a lifetime, they went on to see Khalil Iskander Shahin (c1910-1993), who went by the name ‘Kando,’ an antique dealer in Bethlehem. There, they showed the scrolls to him. The scrolls probably held little significance to them other than some value they might be able to obtain if disposed. 

Kando’s relationship with the Bedouin family was based on years of trading every springtime over dairy produce like butter and cheese as well as antiquities including oil lamps and coins and other knick-knacks in their travels across the vast desert.

This story focuses on four of many other scrolls that the Bedouin family discovered in what is now known as Qumran Cave 1. They were the complete Isaiah Scroll, the Habakkuk Peshar, the Community Rule (aka Manual of Discipline) and the Genesis Apocryphon.

Facsimile of the Isaiah Scroll (Image source: Facsimile Editions)

The Isaiah Scroll (1QIsa) comprises the whole Book of Isaiah written in Hebrew. Apart from a few minor damaged portions, this is a complete parchment, certainly the most complete of all the 220 scrolls found in Qumran. At 1,100 years older than the Leningrad Codex, it is also the oldest known Isaiah text. 

From spades of recent carbon dating, the dating for the Isaiah Scroll is around 335-324BC and 202-107BC. In some other dating studies, it could also possibly be around 150-100BC. Eventually in 1954, the scroll was purchased for $250,000 by Israeli archaeologist Yigael Yadin and repatriated to Israel where it is now resident of the Shrine of the Book at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.

Facsimile of the Manual of Discipline Scroll (Image source: Facsimile Editions) 

Also known as the Manual of Discipline, the Community Rule (1QS, ‘S’ for Serekh ha-Yahad (Serekh means rule) in Hebrew) is actually a sectarian document just like almost 30 percent of the other discovered scrolls. While this one was found in Qumran Cave 1, other parchments of the Community Rule containing different texts were also discovered in Caves 4 and 5. 

One of the most exciting debates emerging from this scroll concerned the identity of the community described in the text and how the parchment itself might be related to the ruins of the nearby settlement. In most cases, the identity has been placed as Essenes, who were thought widely to have occupied the site at Qumran. Being rules concerning community living, the scroll defines things like ritual purity, communal meals and etiquette, monastic initiations, role of women and even manner of defecation.

Replica of the Habakkuk Peshar (Image source: Dead Sea Scrolls Publication)

The Habakkuk Peshar (1QpHab, Peshar means commentary) was, relatively speaking, well preserved and is one of the most extensively researched and analysed of all the scrolls. Having said that, the lowest lines of the parchment scripts were mostly missing and there was a hole through the centre of one of the columns of text. Interestingly, the third chapter was completely missing not because of damage but because it was deliberately omitted. 

As a Hebrew commentary, it was composed around the second half of 1BC at a time when Israel was under attack by Babylonians although the Peshar stated they were the ‘kittim,’ which translated to be ‘westerners.’ In the eschatological commentary, ‘kittim’ could be codified to refer to Romans who, of course, were westerners.

Genesis Apocryphon Scroll unrolled (Image source: Israel Museum, Jerusalem)

Written in Aramaic, the third, the Genesis Apocryphon (1QapGen) – also referred to as the Apocalypse of Lamech – is the least well-preserved. It is a non-Biblical pseudepigraphical dialogue taking place between Lamech, son of Methuselah, and his son, Noah. There are also a first- and third-person narratives involving the patriarch Abraham. 

It is said to be authored around 3BC-1BC based on carbon dating. Following its sale together with the other three scrolls, to the Archbishop at the St Mark’s Monastery (read further), all of them were extensively relocated firstly, from Jerusalem to Syria and then to Lebanon, mainly because of regional political turmoil.

Advertisement in WSJ dated June 1 1954 (Image source: deadseascrolls.org)

Plans to move all of them to the United States were scuppered because of the insistence that a high price could be asked if the scrolls remained in their unfurled state. In 1954, all four scrolls were put up for sale in the Wall Street Journal for an astonishingly high asking price of $250,000,000 and were summarily acquired by Israel and they joined the other three scrolls purchased by professor Eleazar Sukenik of the Hebrew University, an archaeologist himself – in being featured in the Shrine of the Book in West Jerusalem.

Kando paid the Bedouins $20.00 for these scrolls and then promised that in an event of a sale, they would get 30 percent of the proceeds. In actuality, he had absolutely no idea what its value would be but all the same, a buck is a buck and he’d figured that eventually, he’d meet someone who would be interested in search of antiquities.

Questionable value

Archbishop Mar Samuel (Image source: The Eighth Scroll)

Kando, a Syrian Christian himself, had thought the scrolls were Syriac in nature. They could, he thought, be valuable, but probably not overly so. In the right hands, he could make a good buck out of them but otherwise. With that in mind, he sought out the services of a friend who then introduced him to Metropolitan Mar Athanasius Yeshue Samuel (1909-1995), the Archbishop of the Syrian Orthodox Church of Antioch at the St Mark’s Monastery in the Old City of Jerusalem.

Samuel purchased the scrolls for a fee of $97.20. In addition, Kando made his second sale of three other scrolls – the Hymn Scroll (aka Thanksgiving Psalm Scroll), War Scroll and the second (incomplete) Isaiah Scroll – to Sukenik, a story we will later look at briefly as well. Samuel’s idea was to resell them on behalf of his church and nothing more. In other words, he, too, had no idea what he was dealing with.

Samuel proceeded to show the scrolls to some experts he knew but most were sceptical. Some commented that there was little value in them while others suggested that they could be forgeries. The worthlessness of what he had paid for would have been discouraging but in the end, one by the name of Ibrahim Gabriel Sowmy who was adept in Aramaic culture, and his brother, Father Boutros Sowmy, thought the scrolls were very old and by age alone, they thought the antiquity value would be considerable. In fact, it was Ibrahim who correctly said that the scrolls had originated from Qumran but probably, no one caught on to that piece of significance.

The search ends

John C Trever (Image source: Pinterest)

Many months went by and Samuel’s efforts to sell them off came to nought. It seemed no one was interested other than the Sowmy brothers. Even so, he didn’t give up and ultimately, in the spring of 1948, he was rewarded when in his contact with American School of Oriental Research, he was put him in touch with a person by the name of John Cecil Trever (1916-2006).

Trever was a both a Biblical scholar with a degree from Yale Divinity School and a Ph.D. in Old Testament studies from Yale Graduate School. He was also an archaeologist through the American School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem. 

By chance, Trever, who was a visiting professor from Drake University, was, at that time, deputising for the director of the school and so he probably wouldn’t have been the person to meet up with Samuel. As it were, he was called upon to study the authenticity of the three scrolls that Samuel’s representative had brought along.

(image withdrawn owing to complaint of copyright)

Samuel, left with Trever, right (Image source: Alexander Schick)

Trever was fascinated by what he found out and on this day, sixty-nine years ago, he asked Samuel if he could photograph all the three parchments in his possession. The professor had no confirmation if they were what he suspected but to him, there was that intriguing sense of value that he wanted to make sure. 

The only way he could do that was to photograph them and convey them back to his associates in the United States of whom, the famous palaeographer and Near-East scholar, William Foxwell Albright (1891-1971) was among them.

Greatest manuscript discovery

John C Trever photographs the Isaiah Scroll, 1948 (Image source: BAS Library)

On receipt of the photographs, it was Albright who wrote back to Trever on March 15, saying, “My heartiest congratulations on the greatest manuscript discovery of modern times… I should prefer a date around 100BC… What an absolutely incredible find! And there can happily not be the slightest doubt in the world about the genuineness of the manuscript.” 

In fact, these photographs were so treasured for their historical significance that the original film negatives are now safely stored in the Ancient Biblical Manuscript Centre of the Claremont School of Theology in California.

And so with the announcement of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the entire world was at a stunning standstill. Unlike today’s secularised numbness, such a find at that time cannot be underestimated. Its importance was predicated by proof of inerrancy of the Old Testament as we know it. They also revealed in its fullness, the eschatological warnings and that much of Christ’s message including much of His phrases were ‘in the air’ before His birth.

bMartin Schøyen (Image source: Ancient Origins)

Martin Schøyen, a Norwegian collector now owns a fragment that is part of the Book of Leviticus among others from the Dead Sea Scrolls in his Schøyen Collection. With the help of Elgvin and others, a book was published called, ‘Gleanings from the Caves: Dead Sea Scrolls and Artefacts from The Schøyen Collection’ (Bloomsbury, 2016) in which much of the texts from the fragments are featured. 

Some of the scrolls he had acquired had come directly from Kando’s shop in Bethlehem during the Fifties as well as some that he purchased from two scholars who had worked on the Qumran archaeological sites during their student days in 1948.

Schøyen’s fragment from the Book of Leviticus revealed the part that says God promised that should His people observe the Sabbath and obey the Ten Commandments, they would be rewarded. 

As translated by Torleif Elgvin, Norwegian professor of theology and expert on the Dead Sea Scrolls at the NLA University College in Haslum, Norway, part of the text read, “If you walk according to My laws, and keep My commandments and implement them, then I will grant your rains in their season, so that the Earth shall yield its produce and the trees of the field their fruit.”

Also, “I will grant peace in the land and you shall lie down untroubled by anyone; and I will exterminate vicious beasts from the land and no sword shall cross your land,” Elgvin’s translation continued. “I will look with favour upon you and make you fertile and multiply you.”

As we know, these three are from Leviticus 26:3-4, 6, 9a.

Particularly notable about this fragment of the scroll was that Schøyen’s book featured a note from William Kando who took the trouble to affirm that this part of the parchment had come from his late father who had acquired it from the Bedouin family in 1952 (0r 1953) before it became part of other fragments eventually sold to a customer in Zurich three to four years later.

Sukenik’s journey

Prof Eleazar Lipa Sukenik, Hebrew University (Image source: Life, Hope and Truth)

Through the remaining summer of that year, Trever and his peers committed to studying the scrolls. Despite Sukenik being even earlier at realising the value of the scrolls, it was essentially people like Trever who provided the world with the first real glimpse of what they were about and why they were, and still are, important. Yet even so, Sukenik’s contribution should not be ignored because he literally risked his life gaining access to the three scrolls.

Barbed wire used to divide Old City of Jerusalem between Arabs and Jews, 1949 (Image source: The Guardian)

Sukenik was contacted by an Arab middleman in Jerusalem under instruction by an antiquities dealer in Bethlehem by the name of Faidi Salahi. At that time, Trever was not in the picture yet and so Sukenik was not just the first Jewish but indeed the first ever scholar to have laid eyes on any part of the Dead Sea Scrolls. And he literally saw them as they were flashed before his very eyes at a barbed wire blockade that cordoned off the Jewish from the Arabs in the Old City of Jerusalem.

This was at a volatile time just days prior to the British evacuating from the Palestine Mandate. What Sukenik saw was merely a fragment and yet he knew immediately that the clandestine meeting was well worth all the mortal dangers – if he could get his hands on the scrolls, it would change the world but it would call for him to risk his life for a second time in a row.

And so on November 29 1947, Sukenik put his life on the line yet again. This was the night before the official United Nations Resolution 181 (II), which meant the partition of Palestine and the establishment of an Arab and Jewish state. The Jewish professor travelled stealthily on an Arab bus en route to Bethlehem. On that treacherous trip, he was the only Jew but he trusted his instincts enough to make the trip for he longed for the three scrolls that Salahi had given to another antiquities dealer, Ohan, for safe storage.

Finally Sukenik met Ohan albeit under the quiet cloak of an unnoticed backroom. Although nothing formal was struck between the two of them, the Arab willingly allowed him to ferry the scrolls to his university in Jerusalem so that they could be scrutineered. 

The bus trip back across the barbed wire cordon was probably made all the more dangerous now that he had on his body three valuable and highly controversial scrolls that would go a long way in substantiating the validity of Israel and its undeniable history. In hindsight, Sukenik was the last Jew to travel along that fateful route prior to the birth of modern Israel.

The greatest find of our time

Rockefeller Museum (Image source: Najib Albina)

The impact of the Dead Sea Scrolls sparked a decade-long search in as many caves as they could find in the surrounding areas of Qumran, from 1947 to 1956. In that period, Kando worked in tandem with the Jordanian government and the Palestine Archaeological Museum, which today, is called the Rockefeller Museum, and located in East Jerusalem. 

Together they excavated in a hope to find even more scrolls. In his agreement with the Jordanians, Kando reserved the right to offer the museum first right to refusal when it comes to purchasing whatever scrolls they discovered in that period.

(image withdrawn owing to complaint of copyright)

Kando the antiquities dealer, right (Image source: Alexander Schick)

For many years thereafter, Kando continued trading the fragments from his Dead Sea Scrolls find. In fact, he was so prolific that as much as 80 percent of all discovered scrolls went through his hands before ending up in museums, galleries, academic bodies and private collections throughout the world. After his death in 1993, his son William – who also took up his nickname – continued his legacy in dealing with antiquities.

“My father was an agent of the Rockefeller Museum… but sometimes they said, ‘We don’t have money to buy (scrolls).’ Whatever the Rockefeller Museum didn’t want to buy, my father would keep. My father had a licence from the Jordanian Antiquities Authority at that time to buy (scrolls) from the Bedouin and sell them.”

In that ten-year excavation period, eleven caves were uncovered with 825 to 870 scrolls that held biblical manuscripts with and without commentary, apocryphal texts and extra-biblical documents. Of these, the most outstanding was the complete work of Isaiah, which we mentioned earlier. 

We’re now fairly certain that these scrolls had come from the library belonging to the Essenes who were the scribes of the multi-sect Jewish community and as such, they were largely written in Hebrew and Aramaic (although a smattering of them were in Greek).

“Millions of people around the world now understand that the Dead Sea Scrolls are in a league of their own,” said Flint, who also contributed efforts in studying the scrolls at the Dead Sea Scrolls Institute. And that, without a doubt, still stands today unequivocally.

Resources for Further Reading

-    Abegg, Martin (Oct 2006) John C Trever (1915-2006) in Bible History Daily (Washington D.C.: Biblical Archaeology Society). Available at http://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/archaeology-today/archaeologists-biblical-scholars-works/john-c-trever-1915%E2%80%932006/

-    All About God Ministries (no date) Qumran Cave 1 in All About Archaeology (Peyton, Colorado). Available at http://www.allaboutarchaeology.org/qumran-cave-1-faq.htm

-    Bernstein, Moshe J. (2000) Pesher Habakkuk in Schiffman, Lawrence and VanderKam, James (Nov 2008) Encyclopaedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls (New York: Oxford University Press). Available at https://www.amazon.com/Encyclopedia-Dead-Scrolls-Lawrence-Schiffman/dp/0195386450

-    Collier, Keith (Jun 2012) The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Bible – The Greatest Manuscript Discovery of Modern Times in Theological Matters (Fort Worth, TX: Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary). Available at http://theologicalmatters.com/2012/06/05/the-greatest-manuscript-discovery-of-modern-times/

-    Coss, Thurman L. (1963) Secrets from the Caves – A Layman’s Guide to the Dead Sea Scrolls, First Edition (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press). Available at https://www.amazon.com/Secrets-caves-laymans-guide-scrolls/dp/B0007E1ZR6  

-    Crawford, Sidnie White (Apr 2008) Rewriting Scripture in Second Temple Times (Studies in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Related Literature) (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.). Available at https://www.amazon.com/Rewriting-Scripture-Studies-Scrolls-Literature/dp/0802847404

-    Cross, F.L. and Livingstone, E. A., editors (Sept 2005) The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, Third Revised Edition (Oxford University Press). Available at https://www.amazon.com/Oxford-Dictionary-Christian-Church/dp/0192802909

-    Davies, Philip R. and Brooke, George J. and Callaway, Phillip R. (May 2011) The Complete World of the Dead Sea Scrolls (New York: Thames & Hudson). Available at https://www.amazon.com/Complete-World-Dead-Sea-Scrolls/dp/0500283710

-    Davies, A. Powell (1961) The Meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls, Early Printing Edition (New York: Mentor/New American Library). Available at https://www.amazon.com/MEANING-DEAD-SEA-SCROLLS/dp/B00110TOOQ

-    Falk, Daniel K. (2007) The Parabiblical Texts: Strategies for Extending the Scriptures among the Dead Sea Scrolls (The Library of Second Temple Studies) First Edition (London, U.K.: Bloomsbury T & T Clark). Available at https://www.amazon.com/Parabiblical-Texts-Strategies-Extending-Scriptures/dp/1841272426

-    Fitzmyer, Joseph A. (2004) The Genesis Apocryphon of Qumran Cave 1 (1Q20): A Commentary (Rome, Italy: Gregorian Biblical Bookshop). Available at https://books.google.com.my/books/about/The_Genesis_Apocryphon_of_Qumran_Cave_1.html?id=H-lrSnE8RvUC&redir_esc=y

-    Gevirtz, Marianne Luijken (1992) Abram’s Dream in the Genesis Apocryphon: Its Motifs and Their Function in Ma’arav 8 (1992) 229-43. Available at http://aleph.nli.org.il/F?func=find-b&request=000101017&find_code=SYS&local_base=RMB01

-    Jarus, Owen (Oct 2016) 25 New ‘Dead Sea Scrolls’ Revealed in Live Science (Purch). Available at http://www.livescience.com/56428-25-new-dead-sea-scrolls-revealed.html.

-    Qimron, Elisha (1979) The Language and Linguistic Background of the Isaiah Scroll (1QIsa) [by] E. Y. Kutscher: Indices and Corrections (Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah) (Leiden, Netherlands: E. J. Brill). Available at https://www.amazon.com/language-linguistic-background-Isaiah-Kutscher/dp/9004059741  

-    Machiela, Daniel A. (Oct 2009) The Dead Sea Genesis Apocryphon – A New Text and Translation with Introduction and Special Treatment of Columns 13-17 (Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah) (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill Academic Publishers). Available at https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dead-Sea-Genesis-Apocryphon-Introduction/dp/9004168141

-    Perrin, Andrew B. (Jan 2013) Capturing the Voices of Pseudepigraphic Personae: On the Form and Function of Incipits in the Aramaic Dead Sea Scrolls 1 in Dead Sea Discoveries 20(1):98-123. Available for PDF download upon request at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/270693627_Capturing_the_Voices_of_Pseudepigraphic_Personae_On_the_Form_and_Function_of_Incipits_in_the_Aramaic_Dead_Sea_Scrolls_1  

-    Reeves, John C. (May 1992) Jewish Lore in Manichaean Cosmology: Studies in the Book of Giants Tradition (Monographs of the Hebrew Union College, Book 14), First Edition (Cincinnati, OH: Hebrew Union College Press). Available at https://www.amazon.com/Jewish-Lore-Manichaean-Cosmogony-Traditions/dp/087820413X

-    Schiffman, Lawrence H. and VanderKam, James, editors (Nov 2008) Encyclopaedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls (New York: Oxford University Press). Available at https://www.amazon.com/Encyclopedia-Dead-Scrolls-Lawrence-Schiffman/dp/0195386450

-    Elgvin, Torleif and Langlois, Michael and Davis, Kipp and Grabbe, Leslie L., editors (Aug 2016) Gleanings from the Caves: Dead Sea Scrolls and Artefacts from the Schøyen Collection (The Library of Second Temple Studies), Book 71 (London, U.K.: Bloomsbury T & T Clark). Available at https://www.amazon.com/Gleanings-Caves-Scrolls-Artefacts-Collection/dp/0567113000

-    Shanks, Hershel (Oct 1999) Mystery and Meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls (New York: First Vintage Books Edition). https://www.amazon.com/Mystery-Meaning-Dead-Sea-Scrolls/dp/0679780890

-    The Community Rule Scroll. Full online view available at http://dss.collections.imj.org.il/community.

-    The Genesis Apocryphon (1QapGen). Full online view available at http://www.bibleodyssey.org/en/tools/image-gallery/g/genesis-apocryphon.aspx.

-    The Great Isaiah Scroll. Full online view available at http://www.imj.org.il/shrine_center/Isaiah_Scrolling/index.html.

-    Trever, John C (1965) The Untold Story of Qumran, First Edition (Westwood: Fleming H Revell Company). Available at https://www.amazon.com/Untold-Story-Qumran-John-Trever/dp/B0000BTTG9

-    VanderKam, James and Flint, Peter (Oct 2004) The Meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls: Their Significance for Understanding the Bible, Judaism, Jesus and Christianity, Reprint Edition (New York: HarperOne). Available at https://www.amazon.com/Meaning-Dead-Sea-Scrolls-Understanding/dp/0060684658

-    William, Tyler F. (no date) 1QS: The Community Rule (Manual of Discipline) in Biblical Studies. Available at http://biblical-studies.ca/dss/introductions/1QS.html.

-    Wilson, Edmund (Sept 1971) The Dead Sea Scrolls, 1947-1969 (Waukegan, IL: Fontana Press). Available at https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dead-Sea-Scrolls-1947-1969/dp/0006427073