Strugnell Calls Leading Scroll Scholar “Incompetent”

Harvard Professor John Strugnell, chief editor of the Dead Sea Scroll publication team, has called Geza Vermes, one of the world’s leading Dead Sea Scroll scholars, “incompetent.” In an interview published in Scientific American,^a Strugnell claimed that Vermes was not “competent” to examine an unpublished scroll because Vermes had not done serious work.

Vermes, a senior Oxford don, is the author of several books on the Dead Sea Scrolls, including the widely used Penguin edition, The Dead Sea Scrolls in English, now in its third (1987) edition. His other books on the subject are Discovery in the Judean Desert (1956) and The Dead Sea Scrolls: Qumran in Perspective (1977, 1981, 1982). In addition to his doctorate from Oxford, Vermes holds honorary doctorates from the University of Edinburgh and the University of Durham. He is a fellow of the British Academy, editor of the Journal of Jewish Studies, a Governor of the Oxford Center for Hebrew Studies and has twice served as president of the British Association for Jewish Studies. He is also a senior author of the three-volume revised edition of Emil Schurer’s The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ and many other related books and scholarly articles.