Word: scrolls
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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When scholars got a look at a small fragment of the seventh and last of the Dead Sea Scrolls found in Jordan in 1947, they discovered the name of Lamech, the father of Noah. They concluded that the seventh scroll was an apocryphal Book of Lamech. There the matter stood, for the seventh scroll seemed too brittle to be unrolled...
...Israel bought the seventh scroll (and three others) from Jerusalem's Syrian Metropolitan Mar Athanasius Samuel, and experts at Hebrew University tackled the problem of unrolling it. Slowly softened by humid air, the leather scroll finally opened. Its center yielded four complete and legible pages and several fragments. Last week the secret of the seventh scroll was revealed. It proved to be a warning against jumping to conclusions about the Dead Sea Scrolls...
...from being part of the Book of Lamech, the pages were an Aramaic version of Chapters 12 to 15 of Genesis, interwoven with stories and legends about the Patriarchs. As scholars examined the scroll further, it became clear that all of it deals with the Book of Genesis in the same order as the accepted text. The fragment mentioning Lamech that had misled the scholars was evidently part of Chapter 5 of Genesis...
...relocated until 1949, when the Arab Legion undertook the search. Gradually the discoveries were investigated by trained archeologists. Lankester Harding, of the Department of Antiquities, and Pere de Vaux, of the French School of Archeology in Jerusalem, jointly assumed control. In Cave One alone, they found 600 scroll fragments...
This latest batch of scrolls included two made of copper. The uneasy task of unrolling the brittle metal has taken until recently to complete. Incredible secrecy has surrounded the job; John Allegro, 32-year old lecturer in Semitic philology at the University of Manchester, is in charge and has hinted that the contents are "astonishing." The privilege of announcing what it says will be left to the Jordan government, and a dramatic, simultaneous release from Jerusalem, Washington and London is expected by scholars in the early summer. Some speculate that the copper scroll contains a map locating the Essenes' treasures...