Scrolls From the Dead Sea:
The Ancient Library of Qumran and Modern Scholarship

LC COLLECTIONS ENRICH DEAD SEA SCROLL EXHIBIT

The proposal to mount a Dead Sea Scroll exhibit came on the heels of the very public squabble concerning scholarly access to the unpublished fragmentary Dead Sea Scrolls in the custody of the Israel Antiquities Authority. In late August 1991, two scholars affiliated with Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati--Ben Zion Wacholder and Martin Abegg--published a computer reconstruction of various texts using a decades-old concordance. In September of that year, the Huntington Library, responding to the public outcry, acted unilaterally and opened its microfilms of the Dead Sea Scrolls to the public. And finally, Hershel Shanks, the publisher of Biblical Archaeology Review, produced a two-volume facsimile edition of the scrolls. The exhibit that was proposed to LC by the Authority would include scrolls from the very collection that had been the subject of the heated public debate and controversy.

From the outset, the organizers viewed the scroll exhibit as an opportunity to showcase related materials from the collections of each of the respective venues. "Scrolls from the Dead Sea," therefore, highlights not only the scrolls and artifacts on loan from the Israel Antiquities Authority, but also books, manuscripts, photographs, maps, atlases, prints, and even newsreel footage, from the special and general collections of the Library of Congress. Two types of materials were selected to augment the Israeli materials: (1) rarities from the special collections housed in PSCMI and (2) examples of "modern scholarship"--that is, monographs and specialized studies on the exhibited scrolls from the General Collections. The New York Public Library and the M. H. de Young Memorial Museum will follow suit and include materials from their own collections (or materials borrowed from other collections) to supplement the Israeli objects that will form the common nucleus of each venue's exhibition.

The LC materials have been used to highlight a variety of subjects. To illustrate the the chain of transmission of the biblical text, we have placed alongside the two-thousand-year-old Dead Sea Psalm Scroll, a facsimile of the tenth-century Aleppo Codex (which until the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls was the earliest known Hebrew Bible manuscript) and the first Hebrew printed edition of the Psalms from 1477--both from the Library's Hebraic collections. A series of views of the Holy Land from atlases and maps from the Geography and Map Division, as well as a 19th-century panorama of Jerusalem from the Prints and Photographs Division, provide visitors with a sense of place for the scrolls and artifacts. Early editions of Flavius Josephus and Pliny the Elder from the Rare Book and Special Collections Division are displayed in the exhibition section that treats the possible Essene identification of the Qumran community. The Leviticus Scroll, written in the paleo-Hebrew script, is grouped with an 18th-century Torah Scroll and a 19th-century Samaritan Bible manuscript (written in a script similar to the paleo-Hebrew)--all opened to same verses in Leviticus.

Of special interest, are the materials connected with the Library of Congress' first Dead Sea Scroll exhibition in October 1949. A newsreel from the Motion Pictures, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division, titled "Library of Congress ... Oldest Known Bible Scrolls on Display," documents the delivery of the scrolls to the national library, the unrolling of the Isaiah Scroll in the Whitall Pavilion by the Metropolitan of Jerusalem's Syrian Jacobite Church, and the opening of the three-scroll exhibition in the Great Hall of the Library's Thomas Jefferson Building. Completing this section on "LC and the Scrolls" are photographs and memoranda documenting the event from the Manuscript Division.

Interspersed throughout are examples of modern Dead Sea Scroll research drawn from the General Collections. The exhibition features scholarly monographs on the Psalm Scroll, the Book of Enoch, Leviticus, the Damascus Document, the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice, the Community Rule, the phylactery text, the Calendar Scroll, the Hosea Commentary, and the War Rule. A section on the "Dead Sea Scrolls in Translation" includes Indonesian, Japanese, Arabic, Serbo-Croatian, Russian, and Yiddish versions from the Library's Area Studies collections as well as from its General Collections.

Listed below are the supplementary materials from the Library's collections that are included in the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition. The Israel Antiquity Authority's scrolls and archaeological artifacts are enumerated in the published exhibition catalog, Scrolls from the Dead Sea: An Exhibition of Scrolls and Artifacts from the Collections of the Israel Antiquities Authority (Washington, 1993).

Michael W. Grunberger
Head, Hebraic Section

CHECKLIST OF SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIALS
FROM THE COLLECTIONS OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
IN "SCROLLS FROM THE DEAD SEA"

INTRODUCTION - THE WORLD OF THE SCROLLS

David Roberts. "Dead Sea Looking Towards Moab, April 4, 1839" in The Holy Land (London, 1842-1849) Lithograph, with hand-coloring. Prints and Photographs Division. (163)

W. Hammerschmidt. [A View from the Mount of Olives, ca. 1860] Albumin print. Prints & Photographs Division (165)

Claudius Ptolemaeus. Cosmographia (Ulm, 1486) Printed book, with hand-colored woodcut. Geography and Map Division (166)

Abraham Ortelius. "Terra Sancta," in Theatrum orbis terrarum (London, 1606) Printed book, with hand-colored etching. Geography and Map Division (167)

Georg Braun and Franz Hogenberg. "Jerusalem," in Civitatis orbis terrarum (Cologne, 1612) Printed book, with hand-colored etching. Geography and Map Division (168)

A. J. Marks. Bird's-Eye View of the Holy Land (New York, 1879) Chromo-lithograph, sectional map in six parts. Geography and Map Division (169)

Psalms. [Complutensian] (1514-1517) Printed polyglot Bible. Rare Book and Special Collections Division (177)

J. A. Sanders. The Dead Sea Psalms Scroll (Ithaca, 1967) Printed book. General Collections (185)

[Psalms, with commentary of David Kimhi] (Bologna?, 1477) Printed book. Hebraic Section, African and Middle Eastern Division (190)

THE QUMRAN COMMUNITY

"Solomon's Temple," in Flavius Josephus Frontispiece, The Genuine Works ... (London, 1737) Engraving. Rare Book and Special Collections Division (105)

Flavius Josephus. Ioudaikes ... (Basel, 1544) Printed book. Rare Book and Special Collections Division (106)

Flavius Josephus. De bello Judaico (Verona, 1480) Printed book. Rare Book and Special Collections Division (107)

"Jerusalem," in Flavius Josephus. The ... Works of Flavius Josephus (New York, 1792) Printed book, engraving. Rare Book and Special Collections Division (108)

Flavius Josephus. L`histoire ... (Paris, 1530) Printed book. Rosenwald Collection, Rare Book and Special Collections Division (110)

Pliny the Elder. Naturalis historiae (Parma, 1481) Printed book. Rare Book and Special Collections Division (111)

Pliny the Elder. Naturalis historiae (Venice, 1472) Printed book. Rare Book and Special Collections Division (113)

Talmud. Tohorot (Venice, 1528) Printed book. Hebraic Section, African and Middle Eastern Division (118)

John Trever (photographer). Scrolls from Qumran Cave I (Jerusalem, 1972) Printed book. Hebraic Section, African and Middle Eastern Division (126)

Norman Golb. "The Dead Sea Scrolls: A New Perspective," The American Scholar (Spring, 1989) Bound serial. General Collections (135)

Shemaryahu Talmon. The World of Qumran from Within (Jerusalem, 1989) Printed book. General Collections (144)

Yigael Yadin. Tefillin from Qumran (Jerusalem, 1969) Printed book. Hebraic Section, African and Middle Eastern Division (151)

Phylacteries (Early 20th century) Leather. Hebraic Section, African and Middle Eastern Division (182)

THE QUMRAN LIBRARY

Robert Eisenman and James Robinson, eds. A Facsimile Edition of the Dead Sea Scrolls (Washington, 1991) Printed book. Hebraic Section, African and Middle Eastern Division (130)

Carol Newsom. Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice (Atlanta, 1985) Printed book. General Collections (148)

Jozef T. Milik. The Books of Enoch (Oxford, 1976) Printed book. General Collections (150)

John Marco Allegro. Qumran Cave 4 DJD V (Oxford, 1968) Printed book. General Collections (153)

Maurya Horgan. Pesharim: Qumran Interpretations of Biblical Books (Washington, 1979) Printed book. General Collections (154)

Leviticus [Samaritan Pentateuch] (1880) Manuscript. Hebraic Section, African and Middle Eastern Division (175)

First Maccabees. [Walton's Polyglot] (London, 1655-1657) Printed polyglot Bible. Hebraic Section, African and Middle Eastern Division (176)

D. N. Freedman and K. A. Mathews. The Paleo-Hebrew Leviticus Scroll (11QPaleo Lev) (Winona Lake, Indiana, 1985) Printed book. General Collections (184)

TWO THOUSAND YEARS LATER

S. Glassman. Megiles fun Yam ha-Maylekh (New York, 1965) Printed book. Hebraic Section, African and Middle Eastern Division (120)

Eleazar Lipa Sukenik. Megillot Genuzot (Jerusalem, 1948) Printed book. Hebraic Section, African and Middle Eastern Division (125)

Ben Zion Wacholder and Martin Abegg. A Preliminary Edition of the Unpublished Dead Sea Scrolls (Washington, 1991) Printed book. Hebraic Section, African and Middle Eastern Division (128)

Solomon Zeitlin. The Dead Sea Scrolls and Modern Scholarship (Philadelphia, 1956) Printed book. Hebraic Section, African and Middle Eastern Division (129)

John Marco Allegro. The Shapira Affair (Garden City, 1965) Printed book. General Collections (133)

Myriam Harry. "La petite fille de Jerusalem," La Petite Illustration ([Paris] 1914) Unbound serial. General Collections (136)

Myriam Harry. The Little Daughter of Jerusalem (New York, 1919) Printed book. General Collections (137)

Athanasius Yeshue Samuel. Treasure of Qumran (London, 1968). Printed book. General Collections (141)

Solomon Schechter. Documents of Jewish Sectaries (New York, 1970). Printed book. General Collections (142)

Iosif Davidovitch Amusin. Rukopisi Mertvoga Morya (Moscow, 1960) Printed book. General Collections (149)

Alvin W. Kremer to John G. L. Andreassen. "Report on travel to obtain the Hebrew Scrolls" (October 24, 1949) Memorandum. Manuscript Division (155)

Alvin W. Kremer to John G. L. Andreassen. "Travel to deliver the Hebrew Scrolls to the Walters Gallery" (November 7, 1949) Memorandum. Manuscript Division (156)

Joseph M. Baumgarten. "The Laws of the Damascus Document in Current Research" The Damascus Document Reconsidered, edited by Magen Broshi (Jerusalem, 1992) Printed book. General Collections (157)

Eugen Verber. Kumranski Rukopisi (Beograd, 1982) Printed book. General Collections (173)

M. al-Abidi. Makhtutat al-Bahr al Mayyit (1967) Printed book. Near East Section, African and Middle Eastern Division (174)

Ecclesiasticus. [Plantin's Polyglot] (Antwerp, 1569-1572) Printed polyglot Bible, Rare Book and Special Collections Division (179)

Shikai bunsho (Tokyo, 1963) Printed book. Japanese Section, Asian Division (180)

Saleh A. Nahdi. Nafiri maut dari lembah Qamran (Djakarta, 1964) Printed book. Southern Asian Section, Asian Division (181)

"Library of Congress ... Oldest Known Bible Scrolls on Display" Newsreel, 16mm print. Motion Pictures, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division (183)

Richard N. Ostling. "Is Jesus in the Dead Sea Scrolls?" Time (September 21, 1992) Unbound serial. Hebraic Section, African and Middle Eastern Division (187)

James D. Tabor. "A Pierced or Piercing Messiah?--The Verdict is Still Out," Biblical Archaeology Review 18 (November-December 1992) Unbound serial. Hebraic Section, African and Middle Eastern Division (188)

Sebastian C. Adams. A Chronological Chart of Ancient and Modern Biblical History. Third edition. (Cincinnati, 1898) Chromo- lithograph, the first nine panels of twelve. Geography and Map Division (191)

Return to the Table of Contents

Go to the Exhibits Home Page

Go to the Library of Congress Home Page