The Case of the Gilded Staircase

Yigael Yadin’s magnificent edition of the Temple Scroll¹—the latest-to-be-published and the longest of all the Dead Sea Scrolls—has been available to scholars in Hebrew for over four years and last year became available in a three-volume English edition. (See “The Temple Scroll—The Longest and Most Recently Discovered Dead Sea Scroll,” in this issue, by Yigael Yadin .)

The Temple Scroll came into Yadin’s hands in 1967. His edition is a remarkable scholarly achievement, especially considering his other duties, inter alia, as Israel’s Deputy Prime Minister. Such an achievement is especially noteworthy in comparison with the records of other scholars, some of whom, without the excuse of such duties, have now withheld from the public Dead Sea Scroll materials assigned to them by an international committee more than 30 years ago.