Content area
Full text
NEW YORK - What may have been the last shot in the six-year battle over the Dead Sea Scrolls was fired yesterday when the Washington-based Biblical Archaeology Society published the remaining unpublished photographs of the controversial scrolls.
The unauthorized two-volume Facsimile Edition of the Dead Sea Scrolls, containing photographic plates, ends what the publishers had called the virtual monopoly over the scrolls by the Israel Antiquities Authority and what they termed the "cartel" of scholars working under the direction of its Dead Sea Scrolls Project, to whom the scrolls had officially been assigned.
"This makes the scholarly raw material available now for everyone," Hershel Shanks, the president of the society and editor of Biblical Archaeology Review, told The Jerusalem Post. "Anyone can use it in any way he or she wishes, to transcribe it, translate it, publish it, republish it, or print it.
(Amir Drori, director of the Antiquities Authority, claimed in Jerusalem last night that publication of the photographs was a clear violation of copyright. "But we have no intention...