Description
The Hebrew University in collaboration with the Shrine of the Book, Published 1959. Wraps, [13] pp (unpaginated); 33 cm; illustrated with black-and-white photographs.
Rare, out-of-print & unusual books · Since 1997
18
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Catalog notes
Condition & notes
In Good condition. Paper covers show light bumping and creasing to edges and corners, mild shelf wear, light toning and soiling. Staple bound, binding tight. Light soiling to inside of front cover. Otherwise unmarked. Published six years before the Shrine of the Book existed. The text announces the building as still to come, noting a trustee elected in 1957 to the Shrine "which will be erected on the Hebrew University Campus"; when it was dedicated in April 1965 it opened instead as a wing of the new Israel Museum at Givat Ram. The booklet records the project at an earlier stage, when it was still a plan attached to the University. An account of the discovery, acquisition and reading of the seven scrolls from the first Qumran cave. It opens with Eleazar Sukenik at a barbed wire fence in divided Jerusalem on 23 November 1947, shown a scrap of ancient leather by an Armenian dealer days before the United Nations vote on the future of Palestine, and follows his journey to a Bethlehem attic to bargain for the scrolls while the fateful moments ticked away. Seven years passed before all seven were acquired for the University, and the last of them, the Genesis Apocryphon, had only recently been unrolled by Bieberkraut and deciphered by Yigael Yadin and Nahman Avigad. The booklet calls it the seventh and last published scroll, which places this among the earliest complete accounts of all seven. Text by Shulamith Schwartz Nardi (1909-2002), the American-born writer and translator who had taught at the Hebrew University since 1953 and was known for her translations of the scrolls; she later advised Israel's presidents on Diaspora affairs and sat on the Israeli delegation to the UN General Assembly. Photographs by Helene Bieberkraut and from the University's Archaeological Department, layout by Imanuel Grau, printed in Israel by the Jerusalem Post Press. A plate shows President Ben Zvi viewing the scrolls; the back cover reproduces the first Qumran cave. Contents: Journey to Bethlehem; In Pursuit of the Scrolls; The Scrolls: How They Look and How Old They Are; The Oldest Hebrew Bible Manuscripts; Wicked Priest and Righteous Teacher; The Thanksgiving Scroll; The Final War; Tales of Genesis.