The Computer Keys' Scrolls

By Richard N. Ostling

The Dead Sea Scrolls are modern archaeology's most important find in terms of understanding ancient Judaism and the origins of Christianity 20 centuries ago. But at least one-fifth of the material remains unpublished decades after the scrolls were unearthed near Jerusalem. The circle of abnormally secretive experts that was granted control of the documents has been infuriatingly slow in preparing them for publication and has refused to let other experts see them.

To break that logjam, two scholars last week issued the first of several unauthorized volumes of the secret scrolls -- cleverly using a computer- generated text. The editors are Professor Ben Zion Wacholder of Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati and Martin G. Abegg Jr., one of his doctoral students. They began with a concordance to the scrolls -- an index that lists each word -- prepared under the auspices of the official team in the 1950s but not made available until 1988. As with a Bible concordance, each word was annotated according to its context and location. A desktop computer was used to piece together the phrases and sentences.

Volume I of A Preliminary Edition of the Unpublished Dead Sea Scrolls contains 16 almanacs and fragments of a significant document on beliefs and practices of an ancient Dead Sea sect. This material is hardly racy reading. Nor do experts foresee any doctrinal bombshells once the Hebrew texts are fully analyzed.

Even so, publication is a triumph for scholars who have grown old waiting to see the material. Publisher Hershel Shanks of the Biblical Archaeology Society in Washington portrays his group as scholarly Robin Hoods. "This is a historic book," he says, that "broke the monopoly" on unpublished scrolls. But the authorized group is outraged. "What else can one call it but stealing?" asks John Strugnell of Harvard University, who was removed as the team's chief editor last year, ostensibly for health reasons, after he called Judaism a "horrible" and "racist" religion.

The Cincinnatians hope their action will spur the official team, which has set a target date of 1997, to speed publication of all the texts. But given the decades of delays, it remains uncertain when the Dead Sea Scrolls will finally be available and lingering mysteries cleared up.

With reporting by Michael D. Lemonick/New York and Robert Slater/Jerusalem