DEAD SEA SCROLLS — TREVER 427 



about what they had purchased, having failed to get any information 

 from others whom they had consulted. The writer invited the Syrians 

 to the American School to examine their scrolls. Then began a 

 long series of events which is far too involved to treat here.^ 



The largest of the scrolls is the Book of Isaiah, consisting of 17 

 sheets of leather sewn together to make a document 24 feet long by 

 10y2 inches wide, with 54 columns of Hebrew writing, including the 

 entire 66 chapters of the Book of Isaiah.^ There are only a few 

 lireaks, such as those on the first three columns, in the entire manu- 

 script (pi. 2). 



The second scroll was identified by my colleague. Dr. William 

 Brownlee, as a commentary or Midrash on Habakkuk. It is ordy 

 about 6 feet long, composed of two sheets of dark brown leather, badly 

 disintegrated by time and white ants. Only the first two chapters of 

 the Book of Habaldaik are found in the scroll interspersed with the 

 discussion, applying the Biblical prophecy to the period of the Roman 

 conquest of Palestine. 



The third document is called the "Manual of Discipline," since it 

 includes rules and ceremonies of the sect which owned these docu- 

 ments as well as something of their theology. It is composed of a 

 heavier leather, with five sheets sewn together, making the manu- 

 script a little over 6 feet long by 91/2 inches high, with 11 columns of 

 Hebrew text.* Fragments of five or six additional columns of the 

 beginning of this manuscript have since been secured by the 

 Palestine Archaeological Museum in Jerusalem. 



The fourth document in the possession of the Syrians has not yet 

 been unrolled, and is in a badly disintegrated condition (pi. 3) . The 

 future of tliis document seems to hinge on the purchase of the docu- 

 ments by some museum or library which can carry through on the 

 work of unrolling the document and publishing its contents. In April 

 1949 the writer succeeded in removing a fairly large fragment from 

 the document and found that it is a narrative, purportedly written by 

 Lamech, the father of Noah, telling, in this part at least, something 

 of the birth of Noah. Though the name Noah does not actually appear 

 on the fragment, comparison of the fragment with the Book of Enoch 

 (ch. 106) makes it quite apparent that this is the general content. The 

 most important fact about the scroll, however, is that it is written in 

 Aramaic, a language in which we have almost no literary documents 



<A detailed aocount of the writer's experiences in Jerusalem has been published under 

 the title "The Newly Discovered Jerusalem Scrolls," In Bibl. Archaeol., vol. 11, No, 3, 

 pp. 45-57, September 1948. 



•f Burrows, Millar, ed.. The Dead Sea Scrolls of St. Mark's Monastery, 1, Amer. Schools 

 Orient. Res., 1050. This volume includes the complete facsimiles of both the Isaiah and 

 the Habakliuk scrolls. 



8 Burrows, Millar, ed.. The Dead Sea Scrolls of St. Mark's Monastery, 2, fasc. 2, Plates 

 and transcriptions of the Manual of Discipline. Amer. Schools Orient. Res., 1951. 



