poc@cathedral.cerc.wvu.wvnet.edu (Pedro Oscar Cubillos) (04/01/91)
I have a question about the the scientific team that is is charge and owns all publication rights on the Dead See Scrolls: What is its national and religious composition? Thanks, Oscar [There have been a number of articles over the last year in Bible Review and Biblical Archaelogical Review on this subject, so if you have access to a library you should try looking there. The team is international, and I'm pretty sure has Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish participants (and presumably agnostics). They don't actually own the documents however. Ultimately the Israeli government contols them. (This is a fairly recent situation, by the way.) There are also copies in several major U.S. libraries for safekeeping, which however are supposed to be kept secret until the official editions are released. Enough people have seen the documents that it's pretty clear there are no explosive secrets being surpressed for religious reasons. Just petty academic politics. --clh]