Dead Sea Scrolls

* Hershel Shanks’ article, “Who Owns the Dead Sea Scrolls?” (Commentary, April 4), failed to address the real issue of the scrolls: the immediate release of all scroll material in a way for all scholars to read their contents. It doesn’t matter if the Jordanians, Israelis, Palestinians, British, or Americans own some or part of the scrolls. The whole world would be enriched by the scrolls being on exhibit in museums throughout the world. They cannot be the exclusive property of one religion, one people, or one culture. They belong to everyone.

Shanks’ Biblical Archaeology Society should be fighting all of the self-appointed editors who have kept most of the scrolls’ contents from the rest of the world for the last 45 years. Of course, the Biblical Archeology Society did publish a large number of scroll photos in 1991, but has since then thrown in its lot with the “official” scroll editing team in Jerusalem. So far only Robert Eisenman and Michael Wise have published at least 50 of the most historically interesting unpublished scroll fragments. There has been nothing since. Why? The international lawsuits by the official self-appointed editors of the scrolls have tied up the scrolls’ publication.

This is an international scandal and scholastic disaster.

ALAN ALBERT SNOW

Balboa Island