Lifting Veil on Dead Sea Scrolls

Much of the discussion to date has dealt with the physical access to the scrolls, but there is another crucial type of access, that demanding the ability to read the material. What kind of training does a scholar need to be able to read these texts, let alone to piece them together? To begin with he has to know the language of the text, the Hebrew of late antiquity. This does not mean the first two years of college undergraduate or seminary Hebrew, but a thorough knowledge of the Hebrew Bible upon which the diction of the scrolls is based and of early Rabbinic Hebrew as found in the Mishnah and the early Midrashim, the closest layer of Hebrew to that found in the scrolls.

An adequate command of this knowledge of Hebrew takes at least three or four years beyond the initial two years mentioned above. At some point he must study Aramaic, too, since many Jews of that period spoke Aramaic. Then he has to be trained in epigraphy, the science concerned with the reading and interpretation of inscriptions. And since the already published scholarly literature is both vast and crucial for his work, he must be able to read modern Hebrew, French and German, in addition to English.

That this necessary training is daunting, that it requires dedication and talent and financial resources, should not be used as an argument against the publication of the photographed facsimiles. We should not forget, however, that all the goodwill of the librarians, though necessary and commendable, will not enable anyone to read these texts without the proper scholarly training.

ARNOLD J. BAND

Professor of Hebrew and

Comparative Literature, UCLA