Remembering the Dead Sea scrolls discovery
Canadian helped share secret with the world
The discovery 75 years ago of the Dead Sea scrolls played out like an Indiana Jones movie – secret limestone caves, Bedouin shepherds on a frenzied selling spree and a select few scholars who studied them furtively. Bible Study Magazine dedicated its January edition to the historic find, highlighting in particular the role of a Canadian who in the early 1990s found a hi-tech way to open the scrolls to everyone.
The controversial actions of Trinity Western University professor Martin Abegg make for a natural cover story, says editor Mark Ward.
Abegg, now 72, is former codirector of the Dead Sea Scrolls Institute at Trinity Western and an emeritus professor of religious studies. Initially transfixed by the scrolls as a young university student studying under Emanual Tov in Jerusalem, he has dedicated his life’s work to examining the ancient relics.
In 1988 Abegg began working with Ben Zion Wacholder at Hebrew Union College. They heard rumours of a secret scrolls concordance that was
being held tightly by an exclusive group of scrolls scholars – an inner circle they had not been invited into. The pair made a plan to secure a copy of the secret concordance – a moment that would change Abegg’s life and bring the Dead Sea scrolls to the world.
“Abegg realized that with a little computer wizardry and a fair bit of diligence, he could reconstruct the text of the Dead Sea scrolls from the concordance,” the magazine explains (in Randy Brown’s “The Dramatic Discovery and Forced Release of the Dead Sea Scrolls” at www.BibleStudyMagazine.com).
With his reconstructed scrolls manuscripts in hand, Abegg presented them to Wacholder who immediately wanted to publish. Abegg was apprehensive, knowing the scholars who created the original concordance would be upset. “The publishing was difficult for me. I knew it could cause me problems, but I became convinced that it needed to be done,” says Abegg.
He went ahead with the publishing, angering some scholars, but otherwise welcomed by the world, particularly academics who had been waiting three decades to see them.
Forty years into his career, Abegg says it’s been a thrilling journey. “This material predates Jesus,” Abegg says. “From a Jewish point of view, it predates the Mishnah and the Talmud. It’s a period of time that we knew very little about prior to the discovery of the scrolls. It’s given us a view into the time before Jesus.”