Dr Elisha Qimron is a leading academic in the study of ancient Hebrew, in which he took his PhD

Doctor of Philosophy

Doctor of Philosophy, abbreviated as Ph.D., PhD, D.Phil., or DPhil , in English-speaking countries, is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities...

 in 1976 at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Hebrew University of Jerusalem

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem ; ; abbreviated HUJI) is Israel's second-oldest university, after the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. The Hebrew University has three campuses in Jerusalem and one in Rehovot. The world's largest Jewish studies library is located on its Edmond J...

, writing his dissertation on The Hebrew of the Scrolls. Currently, he is a professor in the Department of Hebrew Language

Hebrew language

Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...

 at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

Ben-Gurion University of the Negev   is a university in Beersheba, Israel, established in 1969. Ben-Gurion University of the Negev has a current enrollment of 17,400 students, and is one of Israel's fastest growing universities....

 in Israel

Israel

The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

. More famously, for several decades he has been one of the team of international scholars working on the Dead Sea Scrolls

Dead Sea scrolls

The Dead Sea Scrolls are a collection of 972 texts from the Hebrew Bible and extra-biblical documents found between 1947 and 1956 on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea, from which they derive their name...

, in particular on the texts found in Cave 4 at Qumran

Qumran

Qumran is an archaeological site in the West Bank. It is located on a dry plateau about a mile inland from the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea, near the Israeli settlement and kibbutz of Kalia...

.

In 1979 Qimron was co-opted by John Strugnell

John Strugnell

John Strugnell, was born in Barnet, Hertfordshire, UK. At the age of 23 he became the youngest member of the team of scholars led by Roland de Vaux, formed in 1954 to edit the Dead Sea Scrolls in Jerusalem...

, the editor-in-chief of the Dead Sea Scrolls publication team, to assist in completing long-overdue work on the Halakhic Letter (4QMMT

4QMMT

4QMMT , also known as the Halakhic Letter, is one of the Dead Sea Scrolls that were discovered at Qumran in the West Bank. The manuscript is mainly concerned with the issue of the purity of liquid streams, a matter of great debate between the Pharisees and the Sadducees in later rabbinic...

), on which Strugnell had been working alone since 1959. The work on the fragments was eventually completed and published in 1994. Qimron was the first Israeli scholar on the team.

During the late 1970s and early 1980s many scholars felt frustrated at the delay in publishing the Dead Sea Scrolls

Dead Sea scrolls

The Dead Sea Scrolls are a collection of 972 texts from the Hebrew Bible and extra-biblical documents found between 1947 and 1956 on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea, from which they derive their name...

. It was generally known that most of the texts had been translated, but were still not available to researchers. Some also complained about the proprietary attitude of some of Strugnell's team toward the Scrolls they were working on, which made access to them difficult if not impossible in some cases.

Hershel Shanks

Hershel Shanks

Hershel Shanks is the founder of the Biblical Archaeology Society and the editor of the Biblical Archaeology Review and has written and edited numerous works on Biblical archaeology including the Dead Sea Scrolls....

 of the Biblical Archaeology Society decided that the reconstructions of the Dead Sea Scrolls should be made available to scholars, so in 1992 he published the two-volume A Facsimile Edition of the Dead Sea Scrolls which included, without permission, material on the Halakhic Letter (4QMMT) that Qimron had been working on for some eleven years. Qimron had even given the document its title.

Qimron decided to sue the Biblical Archaeology Society for breaching his copyright, on the grounds that the research BAS had published was his intellectual property as he had reconstructed about 40% of the published text. Such reconstruction is unique in the sense that if the original photographs had been given to a hundred different researchers, a hundred different reconstructions would be made. In 1993 Judge Dalia Dorner of the Israeli Supreme Court awarded Qimron the highest compensation allowed by law for aggravation in compensation against Hershel Shanks and others. A 2000 appeal in front of Judge Aharon Barak and colleagues against the verdict was upheld in Qimron's favor.

Publications

• Elisha Qimron, John Strugnell et al. (1994) Discoveries in the Judaean Desert Volume X. Qumran Cave 4: V: Miqsat Ma'anulle Ha-Torah. Oxford University Press.
• Elisha Qimron. (1996). The Temple Scroll: A Critical Edition with Extensive Reconstructions. Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.
• Edited by Donald W. Parry
  Donald W. Parry
  Donald W. Parry Ph.D. is a professor of Hebrew Bible in the Department of Asian and Near Eastern Languages at Brigham Young University. He holds the Abraham O. Smoot Professorship. He is the author and editor of many works related to the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Old Testament...
  
   and Elisha Qimron. (1999). Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah - STDJ 32. Brill Academic Publishers.
• Elisha Qimron. The Hebrew of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Harvard Semitic Studies, Scholars Press, Atlanta.
• Edited by Donald W. Parry
  Donald W. Parry
  Donald W. Parry Ph.D. is a professor of Hebrew Bible in the Department of Asian and Near Eastern Languages at Brigham Young University. He holds the Abraham O. Smoot Professorship. He is the author and editor of many works related to the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Old Testament...
  
  and Elisha Qimron. (1999). The Great Isaiah Scroll (1QIsaª). A New Edition Brill Academic Publishers.

External links

• Qimron and 4QMMT
• Qimron vs. Shanks reported in the New York Times
• Qimron's legal rights upheld in 2000 appeal
• Qimron and 4QMMT
• Qimron on the Dead Sea Scrolls Timeline
• Qimron and the Dead Sea Scrolls in Time Magazine
• 4QMMT published in BAS
• Article about Qimron by Simon Holloway
• An overview of the Qimron v Shanks legal case