Dead Sea Scrolls

The Baltimore Hebrew Institute, the successor to Baltimore Hebrew University established this year at Towson University, is introducing itself to the greater community on Sunday with a lecture on the Dead Sea scrolls. Lawrence H. Schiffman, chairman of the Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University, will present "Decoding Early Judaism: Reflections on the Contributions of Dr. Joseph Baumgarten" at 4 p.m. in Room 4110 of the new liberal arts building at Towson.

The Baltimore Hebrew Institute, the successor to Baltimore Hebrew University established this year at Towson University, is introducing itself to the greater community on Sunday with a lecture on the Dead Sea scrolls. Lawrence H. Schiffman, chairman of the Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University, will present "Decoding Early Judaism: Reflections on the Contributions of Dr. Joseph Baumgarten" at 4 p.m. in Room 4110 of the new liberal arts building at Towson.

JERUSALEM -- Weston Fields is not a faint man. Each summer, he rules a crew of a dozen salmon fishermen as they buck the frigid tides and angry winds off Kodiak Island in Alaska. It is hard, bold work that toughens the mind and the hands.But the first time this fishermen held the delicate parchment of a Dead Sea Scroll, he swooned."I was really in a daze. It was such an experience. I remember that I went to my car and backed up into a wall," he says.That experience helped set the course of a strangely dual career.

Indoor sports arena opens today in Howard County Howard County officials are to open a new indoor sports arena, the final piece of Meadowbrook Park, today in the southeast corner of the intersection of routes 29 and 100 in Ellicott City. The facility was to officially open at 9 a.m. with a ribbon cutting. It contains courts for volleyball and basketball, and provides flexible open space for a variety of indoor sports, including laser tag and other indoor games. The $8.5 million, 77-acre park also contains a large outdoor playground, walking paths and picnic pavilions, and is next to a park-and-ride lot for commuters.

NEW YORK -- More name-calling controversy has erupte among scholars of the Dead Sea Scrolls, deepening distrust and threatening to disrupt an international conference scheduled to begin tomorrow at the New York Academy of Sciences.A group of scrolls experts is asserting that the authors of a new book translating 50 of the ancient documents borrowed heavily and without acknowledgment from the research of others.They condemned that as the "unethical appropriation" of previous transcriptions and translations, and said the authors' claims of having done independent and original work were "laughable and manifestly dishonest."

Two American scholars are breaking the 44-year embargo on the Dead Sea Scrolls.The editor of Biblical Archaeology Review says that today his journal would issue the initial volume of what he says will be the first complete edition of the scrolls, hailed as the greatest archaeological find of the 20th century upon their discovery in Palestine beginning in 1947.The new computer-generated version is, in effect, a bootlegged copy of the scrolls because the material was never released by the tightly knit group of scholars who have monopolized access to the ancient Hebrew manuscripts.

Samuel Iwry, one of the world's leading Hebrew scholars and an authority on the Dead Sea Scrolls, died of a stroke Saturday at Sinai Hospital. The Mount Washington resident was 93. Dr. Iwry was born and raised in Bialystok, Poland. He was a direct descendant of Rebbe Israel Baal Shem Tov, who lived from 1700 to 1760 and was founder of Judaism's Hasidic Movement. He graduated from Warsaw University, the Higher Institute for Judaic Studies and the Teachers College of Wilno, Poland. After the Nazi invasion in 1939, he wandered from Warsaw to Moscow to Tokyo, and finally to Shanghai.

WASHINGTON -- Some of the best-preserved and least-viewed fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which have been objects of religious veneration and of venomous scholarly debate, will go on display at the Library of Congress in April, the first major American exhibition of the scrolls in a generation.The exhibition, proposed by a representative of the Israeli Antiquity Authority in December 1991, near the height of the furor over access to the documents, will include at least 11 major scroll fragments.

LOS ANGELES -- Israel is warning the Huntington Library not to release the institution's photographic record of the Dead Sea Scrolls, hinting at possible legal action if the library breaks the decades-long convention that has kept the ancient Jewish documents under the control of a small group of scholars.Huntington Library officials, however, responded defiantly, saying they have no intention of changing their plans and planned to open the collection without restriction to scholars beginning today.

A Headline News look at this week's reading fare:Fans of Tibetan hunk Richard Gere can get his full account of a turn to Buddhism in September Body Mind Spirit, including what he says was a critical day in which he walked around New York City for the whole day not speaking a word, "just thinking to myself, 'I wish you happiness and the causes of future happiness.' " But did Mr. Gere ever stop for a bagel along the way?The Aug. 21 New York reports that New Yorkers' favorite bagels are, in order, plain, cinnamon raisin, sesame, poppy, onion, garlic, pumpernickel, salt and whole wheat.

JERUSALEM - A 3-foot-tall tablet with 87 lines of Hebrew that scholars say they believe dates from the decades just before the birth of Jesus is causing a quiet stir in biblical and archaeological circles, especially because it may speak of a Messiah who will rise from the dead after three days. If such a messianic description really is there, it will contribute to a developing re-evaluation of both popular and scholarly views of Jesus, because it suggests that the story of his death and resurrection was not unique but part of a recognized Jewish tradition at the time.

Samuel Iwry, one of the world's leading Hebrew scholars and an authority on the Dead Sea Scrolls, died of a stroke Saturday at Sinai Hospital. The Mount Washington resident was 93. Dr. Iwry was born and raised in Bialystok, Poland. He was a direct descendant of Rebbe Israel Baal Shem Tov, who lived from 1700 to 1760 and was founder of Judaism's Hasidic Movement. He graduated from Warsaw University, the Higher Institute for Judaic Studies and the Teachers College of Wilno, Poland. After the Nazi invasion in 1939, he wandered from Warsaw to Moscow to Tokyo, and finally to Shanghai.

QUMRAN, West Bank -- The saga of the Dead Sea scrolls, the most direct, handwritten link we have to the time and spirit of Jesus and a source of perpetual controversy, seems about to gain a new chapter.Since last week, archaeologists have been digging out by hand what appear to be four collapsed caves near the sites where 800 scrolls were unearthed from 1947 to 1956, in what many consider the greatest manuscript discovery of modern times. This is hardly the first effort to follow up on those discoveries in the monumental limestone cliffs and chalk-and-clay caverns that loom over the salty tablelands of the Dead Sea. Hundreds of caves and holes in the area have been combed over the years by both archaeologists and Bedouin tribesmen.

A Headline News look at this week's reading fare:Fans of Tibetan hunk Richard Gere can get his full account of a turn to Buddhism in September Body Mind Spirit, including what he says was a critical day in which he walked around New York City for the whole day not speaking a word, "just thinking to myself, 'I wish you happiness and the causes of future happiness.' " But did Mr. Gere ever stop for a bagel along the way?The Aug. 21 New York reports that New Yorkers' favorite bagels are, in order, plain, cinnamon raisin, sesame, poppy, onion, garlic, pumpernickel, salt and whole wheat.

Archbishop Mar Athanasius Yeshue Samuel, 87, the primate of the Syrian Orthodox Church of the United States, died April 16 of a heart attack in Lodi, N.J. His 1947 encounter with a Bethlehem cobbler bearing 2,000-year-old engraved leather pieces led to the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls.Don Pullen, 53, an avant-garde jazz pianist who favored a percussive approach and sometimes played using his elbows and the backs of his hands, died Saturday of lymphoma in East Orange, N.J.@

William Moffett, 62, the Huntington Library director who opened scholarly access to the Dead Sea Scrolls photographic archive, died of cancer Monday in San Marino, Calif. He focused international attention on the Huntington in 1991 when he eased access to the Dead Sea Scrolls photographs, ending a 40-year monopoly held by a small number of researchers. He was selected librarian of the year in 1993 by the Association of College and Research Libraries. That year, he received the American Library Association's Immroth Memorial Award for Intellectual Freedom and the Special Libraries Association's Professional Librarian of 1993 award.

For more than 40 years, Jewish and Christian scholars have eagerly awaited translations of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the 2,000-year old papyrus and leather documents that illuminate an ancient Jewish community.But now, a growing debate about the nature of anti-Semitic remarks by the scrolls' editor as well as the change of leadership in the editing project may once again postpone publication."This whole incident works against what we all say we want -- to see the scrolls published," said Eugene Ulrich, a professor at Notre Dame University in South Bend, Ind., and one of the three new editors heading the publication project.

William Moffett, 62, the Huntington Library director who opened scholarly access to the Dead Sea Scrolls photographic archive, died of cancer Monday in San Marino, Calif. He focused international attention on the Huntington in 1991 when he eased access to the Dead Sea Scrolls photographs, ending a 40-year monopoly held by a small number of researchers. He was selected librarian of the year in 1993 by the Association of College and Research Libraries. That year, he received the American Library Association's Immroth Memorial Award for Intellectual Freedom and the Special Libraries Association's Professional Librarian of 1993 award.

JERUSALEM -- Weston Fields is not a faint man. Each summer, he rules a crew of a dozen salmon fishermen as they buck the frigid tides and angry winds off Kodiak Island in Alaska. It is hard, bold work that toughens the mind and the hands.But the first time this fishermen held the delicate parchment of a Dead Sea Scroll, he swooned."I was really in a daze. It was such an experience. I remember that I went to my car and backed up into a wall," he says.That experience helped set the course of a strangely dual career.

Teddy Kollek, the recently retired mayor of Jerusalem, once summed up Yigael Yadin's life in a single sentence: "He was a good soldier, and excellent archaeologist, but a lousy politician."Summing up the same life took Neil Asher Silberman almost 400 pages and, while he adds considerably more detail, the conclusion is pretty much the same.Few outside Israel probably remember Yadin, though he has been dead only 10 years. But for most of Israel's brief history, he was a conspicuous and guiding figure.