The Dead Sea Scrolls: A Personal Account

About this book

The Dead Sea Scrolls: A Personal Account by John C. Trever. John C. Trever happened to by studying the plants and animals of the Bible at the American School of Oriental Research in the turbulent Jerusalem of early 1948. The Director of the School was on a 2 week vacation in Baghdad leaving Professor Trever as Acting Director. It was during that period of time that a phone call came from Father Butrus Sowmy librarian of the Syrian Orthodox Monastery of St. Marks in Jerusalem. Preparing a catalog of the monasterys rare book collection he had happened across some manuscripts he said written in an ancient Hebrew hand. Could anyone at the School help him identify these? So came the first opportunity for the world at large to learn of the greatest discovery of our time - the Dead Sea Scrolls which had been found in fact a year earlier by Bedouin shepherds around Khirbet Qumran near the Dead Sea. In this revised version of his earlier work The Untold Story of Aumran Dr. Trever relates the story of the frantic scholarly explorations carried on against the equally harried backdrop of war-torn pre-partition Palestine. It is an absorbing story of intrigue and undercover negotiations personal risk and personal frustration and tireless pursuit of the evidence.