Blood on the Floor at New York Dead Sea Scroll Conference

What conference organizer Norman Golb of the University of Chicago intended as a “healing conference” (his words), in which scholars with widely varying interpretations of the Dead Sea Scrolls would meet in civil discourse, began with what can only be described as an academic brawl. The four-day conference December 14–17, 1992—was held, appropriately enough, in the New York Blood Center: By the first day there was blood on the floor.

In the end, a reconciliation was cobbled together. But the wounds have not yet healed and they will doubtless leave scars, perhaps permanently.

A book entitled The Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered,^a by Dead Sea Scroll maverick Robert Eisenman and a young University of Chicago scholar named Michael Wise, served as the focus, if not the apple, of discord. Published a mere two months before the conference—after the invitations to address the conference had been accepted and the program announced—the book purports to present “the first complete translation and interpretation of 50 key documents withheld for over 35 years.”