Israeli Oversight Committee Takes Charge

A new actor has suddenly appeared on the stage of the drama known as the Dead Sea Scroll Publication Scandal—an Israeli oversight committee. Although the committee has been in existence for some time, it was largely inactive. Indeed, it never even met until last fall.^a

Now, however, it is taking charge.

Reportedly the committee was irked—justifiably, in our view—that scroll editors were subassigning unpublished texts to their own students for editing. The committee wanted a more equitable method of assigning texts for publication.

One of the first things the committee did was to notify scroll editors that they no longer had sole authority to subassign and reassign texts. The committee wants these decisions to be made in consultation with the committee and with chief scroll editor John Strugnell. For that reason, scroll editor J. T. Milik told Father Joseph Fitzmyer that he (Milik) was no longer authorized to give Fitzmyer publication rights to certain texts Fitzmyer asked for. (See the article by Father Fitzmyer, “A Visit with M. Jozef T. Milik, Dead Sea Scroll Editor,” in this issue.)

Whether Milik would have given Fitzmyer these texts even if he had been free to do so remains unclear. It may well be that Milik would have refused Fitzmyer anyway and was happy to have the Israeli oversight committee as an excuse. Fitzmyer now blames the Israeli oversight committee for the continuing delay.