Category:Qumran Studies--1940s

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Qumran Studies in the 1940s--Works and Authors

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Overview

The initial discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls took place between November 1946 and February 1947. Two Bedouin shepherds discovered seven scrolls housed in jars in a cave now known as Cave 1, on the northern shore of the Dead Sea, near the Qumran site. These scrolls were later identified as the complete Isaiah Scroll, the Community Rule, the Pesher Habakkuk, a second Isaiah Scroll, the War Scroll, the Thanksgiving Scroll, and the Genesis Apocryphon.

For some time the Bedouin kept the scrolls in their tents, later they contacted some antiquities dealers in Bethlehem in the hope of selling the manuscripts, but without success. Eventually the manuscripts were purchased by a Syrian Orthodox cobbler, Khalil Iksander Shahin, nichnamed Kando. Kando sold four manuscripts to the Syrian metropolitan archbishop of Jerusalem, Mar Athanasius Yeshua Samuel. The remaining three mss (i.e. the second Isaiah Scroll, the Thanksgiving Scroll, and the War Scroll) were purchased by Eliezer Sukenik in Nov-Dec 1947 with funds from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

In 1947 the scrolls caught the attention of John C. Trever, of the American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR). On 21 February 1948 Trever photographed three of the scrolls discovered in Cave 1, both on black-and-white and standard color film. On 11 April 1948, Millar Burrows, head of the ASOR, announced the discovery of the scrolls in a general press release.

In 1948, the government of Jordan finally gave permission to the Arab Legion to search the area where the original Qumran cave was thought to be. Consequently, Cave 1 was rediscovered on 28 January 1949, by Belgian United Nations observer Captain Phillipe Lippens and Arab Legion Captain Akkash el-Zebn. A preliminary excavation of the Cave was conducted from 15 February to 5 March 1949 by the Jordanian Department of Antiquities led by Gerald Lankester Harding and Roland de Vaux. Additional Dead Sea Scroll fragments, linen cloth, jars, and other artifacts were recovered.