In June 1954 a small advertisement was placed in the Wall Street Journal offering the scrolls for sale on behalf of the head of the Syrian Orthodox Church who needed to sell them for their own financial reasons. They were purchased for $250,000 by a Mr Sidney Esteridge who was acting on behalf of the Israeli State and soon the scrolls were back home in Jerusalem.
The three scrolls that archaeologist Eleazar Sukenik had obtained in 1947 were edited and published soon after, while the American School of Oriental Research published the photographs and transcriptions of two others in 1950 with another one following a year later. In 1952 Professor Father Roland de Vaux was named as editor-in-chief of the planned publication process. A generous grant was secured from John D. Rockefeller to cover the costs of the scholars working on the scrolls in Jerusalem, work that was expected to last 6 years. In 1953 he assigned a team of eight men, four Catholics and four Protestants, to ensure an unbiased representation of the contents of the texts.
Over 800 different manuscripts have been recovered. Of these fewer than 12 were intact. The rest were mere fragments, about 25,000, many no bigger than a fingernail. The process of assembling the fragments can only be described as primitive. When piecing them together the researchers used unsuitable materials such as masking tape or even the edging from sheets of postage stamps. the fragments were often laid out in trays on desks exposed to the damaging effects of Middle Eastern sunshine streaming in through the windows. During the Suez Canal crisis in 1956 there were fears for the safety of the fragments from Cave 4. They were transferred to the Ottoman Bank vaults in the Jordanian capital, Amman. When returned a year later they were found to have deteriorated markedly, perhaps of inappropriate storage conditions - many of the fragments had patches of mildew on them.
Despite occasional internal friction and disagreements the team worked efficiently throughout the 1950s and 1960s. As time passed, some of the original members left and other scholars were invited to join the group.
Following de Vaux’s death in 1971 members of his team had either retired or left to take up other posts. Without adequate supervision, a culture of inefficiency, secrecy and nepotism set in. Any outside scholars who wanted access to the scroll material were met with a point-blank refusal. Even the list of items was off-limits. This fuelled suggestions that there were sinister reasons for this secrecy. In 1991 the Israeli authorities placed the entire project in the capable hands of Emmanuel Tov, a noted professor of biblical studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Regrettably he too maintained the “secrecy rule”. However the situation began to change in the early 1990s when two young researchers with computer skills, Ben Zion Wacholder and Martin Abegg reconstituted 17 scrolls and had them published in September 1991. The Huntingdon Library in Britain was one of the few places outside Israel that had obtained one of the complete sets of photographs which had been prepared in case the scrolls were lost in some disaster.
Sources: The Dead Sea Scrolls Rediscovered: an updated look at one of archaeology's greatest mysteries/Hodge, Stephen. Seastone, Berkeley CA. 2003.
The mystery and meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls/Shanks, Hershel. Random House, Inc. New York. 1998
The following link is entitled Restoration Christian Perspectives On The Dead Sea Scrolls. Running time 57 minutes.
.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kj8t6gVviik
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