![]() ![]() Only a few scraps of fragments from Cave 4, which contain but “five tiny fragments, all from the prayer in chapter 9 but none with more than one complete word” (Ulrich 1989:3), remain to be published (i.e., the fragments of the scroll designated 4QDane). In November 1989, more than 35 years after its discovery and more than 25 years after Cross made his astounding declaration, this text, along with others from Cave 4 on the book of Daniel, were finally published. The question now was: How much of the book of Daniel is on this scroll, and precisely what sections are preserved and how does it compare with the rest of the Hebrew text of the book of Daniel? This was fantastic news from a scholarly point of view, for the text of Daniel has long been considered suspect by many scholars on various grounds we’ll be discussing below. In the second edition of the book (1961), Professor Cross refers to the fragments of the Daniel scrolls: “One copy of Daniel is inscribed in the script of the late second century BC in some ways it is more striking than that of the oldest manuscripts from Qumran” (43). Cross of Harvard University published The Ancient Library of Qumran, a comprehensive survey of the scrolls. The significance of the Daniel fragments of the Dead Sea scrolls was voiced first in 1958 when professor Frank M. More than 40 years later a coterie of dawdling scholars is still spinning out the work while the world waits and the precious pieces lapse into dust.”įortunately, various encouraging developments have taken place since the summer of 1991, and we can look forward to a speedy publication of the remaining scroll fragments and texts. For example, the New York Times in a July 9, 1989, editorial, “The Vanity of Scholars,” complained that “the scrolls were discovered in 1947, but many that are in fragments remain unpublished. The charges regarding the non-publication of these Dead Sea scroll texts were taken up in the summer of 1989 by the public press. ![]() Hershel Shanks, the editor of BAR, says that “a reasonable guess is that 100 of these are Biblical texts on 200 plates” (1989c:20). There have been charges of a scandal because there are about “400 separate unpublished texts arranged on 1,200 different plates” hidden for some 40 years from the scrutiny of the scholars. Biblical Archaeology Review (BAR) has played a major role in pushing for publication in a number of articles over the past few years, especially in 19 (Shanks 1989a, 1989b, 1989c, 1989d, 1990). Let me first briefly describe the outrageous delay that has occurred in the publication of many of the Dead Sea scrolls, discovered way back in 1947–1948. ANCIENT KINGDOM OF THE DEAD SEA FULLThe publication by Professor Eugene Ulrich, “Daniel Manuscripts from Qumran” (1989), gives us full insight into these pivotal textual finds and follows the one published two years earlier on other parts of these finds (Ulrich 1987). In the 1980's, two articles of vital interest on the Hebrew and Aramaic texts of the book of Daniel were published from among the Dead Sea scroll textual finds made originally in 1952 in Cave 4 at Qumran. This position has been taken by skeptics to avoid the detailed prophecies in Daniel that ultimately came to pass, strong evidence for the divine authorship of Scripture. Most importantly, the existence of Daniel in the DSS disproves the skeptical position that Daniel was originally written in the 2nd century BC. Though the article is 20 years old, it has still significant information about the Book of Daniel found amongst the Dead Seas Scrolls. Hasel in 1992, and was reproduced in Bible and Spade with permission. This article was originally published by Dr. ![]()
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