Intrigue and the Scroll—Behind the Scenes of Israel’s Acquisition of the Temple Scroll

Were it not for the efforts of the man who got Jerry Falwell started in television, the famous Dead Sea Scroll known as the “Temple Scroll” might never have come to light.

At least that is the story according to Reverend Joe Uhrig, now semiretired and living in Virginia.

Yigael Yadin, Israel’s foremost Biblical archaeologist before his death in 1984, tells a somewhat different story. In his magisterial, three-volume edition of The Temple Scroll,^a Yadin describes how he first learned of the Temple Scroll, a scroll that he identified as the Torah (or Bible) of the Essene community of Jews that lived near the Dead Sea at the time of Jesus.