Dead Sea Scrolls Protected by Copyright

J E R U S A L E M, Aug. 31, 2000 -- 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.

Shanks, editor of the Washington-based Biblical ArchaeologyReview, said he “respectfully” disagreed with the decision butwould abide by it.

“I think our publication was in the context of a campaign tofree the scrolls,” he said. “The implication is now that ascholar can use it [the scrolls] for his scholarly work, and tothat extent the Supreme Court decision is an improvement over thelower court,” he said.

The scrolls, mostly in fragments by the time of their discoveryin caves near the Dead Sea in the late 1940s and early 1950s, arebelieved to be from the archives of Jewish sects who lived in thearea around the time of Jesus.

A Scroll Monopoly?

“This case allowed the [Israeli] establishment to maintain amonopoly on the scrolls,” said Eisenman, a professor of MiddleEast Religions and Archaeology at California State University-LongBeach. “It’s had a chilling effect on my work.”

In fact, the “monopoly” is over. The scrolls — and thescholarship by Qimron and others — are now available for study onCD-ROM and in book form.

That, Qimron acknowledged, was a result of the publication ofthe book by Shanks, Robinson and Eisenman.

“It’s all open now,” he said. “The [Israel] AntiquitiesAuthority decided to open it up after they published.”

Although overjoyed that the case was over — Eisenman’s lawyersaid an appeal was unlikely — Qimron said he has regrets about theaccess others now have to the scrolls. He said it robbed scholarssuch as himself of the leisurely pace they once enjoyed.

“Now there are a lot of people, and they work in haste to beateach other to publication,” he said. “That’s not proper.”

Home-Court Advantage?

Eisenman said he expected the decision: “It’s a hometowncourt,” he said in a telephone interview.

He noted that Shanks acknowledged that the decision to includeQimron’s work was his own — and was made despite his and Robinson’sobjections — yet the court still fined them in its decision.

That was proof, Eisenman said, that Israel has assumed a“monopoly” over the scrolls and that authorities here are notready to countenance study of the texts by others.

“After the way we were treated, young scholars now will notstand against the establishment,” he said.

Osnat Gouez, a spokeswoman for the Antiquities Authority,dismissed the claim as “outrageous” and not worthy of furthercomment.