Dead Sea Scrolls Protected by Copyright

J E R U S A L E M, Aug. 31 -- Israel’s Supreme Court upheld anIsraeli scholar’s copyright on the deciphering of one of the DeadSea Scrolls, the musty documents chronicling Holy Land life in thetime of Jesus.

The decision — the latest in the years-long battle betweenoverseas academics and scholars here over who controls the scrapsof parchment — levels fines against a trio of U.S.-based scholarsfor copyright violation.

Amos Hausner, a lawyer for U.S. scholar Robert Eisenman, saidthe decision inhibits the free use of scientific knowledge.

“It’s like copyrighting scientific truth, like Einsteincopyrighting ‘e equals mc2,’” Hausner said. “These ancient textsare part of the scientific knowledge.”

At issue was research by Elisha Qimron, a scholar at Ben GurionUniversity in the Israeli desert town of Beersheva.

Piece by Piece

After years of painstaking study of hundreds of fragments siftedfrom 15,000 found in cave near the Dead Sea, Qimron pieced togethera 2,000-year-old missive from the leader of a Jewish sect based inthe Judean Desert to a Jewish leader in Jerusalem.

Then in 1992, three scholars included Qimron’s paper in a bookthey published and edited, A Facsimile Edition of the Dead SeaScrolls. They did not have Qimron’s permission. The publisher,Hershel Shanks, obtained a draft of the paper circulating amongscholars for comment.

Judge Yaakov Tirkel, writing for a unanimous three-judge panel,agreed that Qimron could not claim copyright on the scrollfragments, nor on those fragments that were pieced together byphysical resemblance.

However, the deduction of the 40 percent of the text that wasmissing emerged from Qimron’s “creative depths,” Tirkel said, andthe scholar was therefore was entitled to the copyright.

A Fine Mess

The court acknowledged the lesser role of Eisenman and JamesRobinson in the copyright violation, fining them $2,500 as opposedto the $10,000 it fined Shanks. Tirkel said the two were stillliable because they did not demand that Shanks remove their namesas editors once they discovered he was to include Qimron’s work.