This section is from the document '/obi/book/Rants/Dead.Sea.Scrolls.Update'.

From ralphw@thebox.rain.com Sun Jun 16 02:17:30 1991
From: ralphw@thebox.rain.com (Ralph Winston)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,talk.politics.mideast,alt.activism,soc.history,soc.misc
Subject: Dead Sea Scrolls Update!
Date: 12 Jun 91 09:02:15 GMT
Organization: TheBox - Public Access Xenix


                  From the _IHR Newsletter_, January 1991:
 
                      THE SCROLLS: THE PLOT THICKENS
 
     The _IHR Newsletter_ and _The Journal of Historical Review_ have
reported on previous evidences that translation and publication of the
famous Dead Sea Scrolls, discovered in Palestine in 1947, has been
delayed by Christian and Jewish authorities which have controlled
access to them since their discovery.  A growing chorus of criticism
>from biblical scholars -- Jewish, Christian, and agnostic -- has echoed
the charges that IHR Editorial Advisor Dr. Martin Larson first raised
in his seminal paper delivered to the IHR's International Revisionist
Conference in 1981, printed in the Summer 1982 issue of the _Journal of
Historical Review_ and thereafter issued as a pamphlet, that there is
in fact a "conspiracy to keep [the] Scrolls secret," as Hershel Shanks,
editor of the _Biblical Archeology Review_, charged in that journal
(July/August 1989).
 
     The latest and most bizarre fillip to the scandal of the Dead Sea
Scrolls has been the dismissal of Dr. John Strugnell, the Harvard
Divinity School professor who had been chief editor of the project, by
the Israeli Antiquities Authority, which gained control of the Scrolls
following the Zionist seizure of East Jerusalem and the West Bank in
1967.  According to press reports, Strugnell told an Israeli reporter
last November that he regarded "Judaism" as "originally racist" and "a
horrible religion" and that the state of Israel "is founded on a lie."
 
     In the past, Dr. Strugnell, one of the original editors of the
Scrolls, had himself been a target of critics of the snail's pace of
the Scrolls' publication.  In November, however, Strugnell told a
reporter from the _Boston Herald_ that he had been confined to a mental
hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts for a leg injury, because "various
people here and in Israel are trying to get rid of me and keep me from
publishing the Scrolls" ("Scrolls Prof: People Trying to Get Rid of
Me," December 14, 1990).  Allegations of "decades" of "mental health"
and "drinking problems" attributed to his former colleagues ("Biblical
Scholars Sort Issues behind Editor's Dismissal," _Orange County [CA]
Register_, December 24, 1990) leave unanswered the question of how such
a situation, if it existed, could be tolerated, particularly when
Strugnell was so swiftly dispatched for voicing, however combatively, a
few home truths about how certain influential Jewish opinion makers,
ancient and modern, see their Gentile neighbors.
 
     The solution to the scandal of the Dead Sea Scrolls remains what
Dr. Larson urged a decade ago: ". . .first, they must be removed from
the custody of the Israeli government, and second, we must establish an
intellectual climate in the western world in which scholars and
ministers can discuss religious subjects without feear of reprisals. .
."
 
[An updated version of Dr. Larson's 1982 article "Whatever Happened to
the Dead Sea Scrolls?" is available in leaflet form.  Order 10 copies
for $2, 50 copies for $5, 100 or more copies for 8 cents each from:
IHR, 1922 1/2 Newport Blvd., Suite 191, Costa Mesa, CA 92627.]


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     I hope this gives those who are interested some valuable and 
interesting information concerning the fate of the famous Dead Sea Scrolls.


                                Ralph Winston

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