428 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 10 53 



from an early period, and the current tongue in Palestine during the 

 early Roman period.® 



In addition to the four documents secured by St. Mark's Monastery, 

 the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, through the late Dr. E. L. 

 Sukenik, secured three additional documents in six separate sections 

 in November of 1947. Four of these scrolls went together to make 

 up the "Songs of Thanksgiving," written with a beautiful script simi- 

 lar to a number of the fragments found by the excavators. Another 

 and less beautiful hand prepared part of the scroll. 



Also among the Hebrew University documents is a scroll looking 

 considerably like the Habakkuk commentary in structure, but which 

 Dr. Sukenik called the "Battle between the Sons of Light and the Sons 

 of Darlmess," apparently an imaginary battle conceived as a part 

 of the final days of the end of the age when righteousness will be 

 victorious.^" 



The final scroll proved to be a very fragmentary section of another 

 scroll of the Book of Isaiah, and to judge from its script, dates among 

 the latest of the documents found in the cave, at least a hundred years 

 later than the other Isaiah scroll. 



But the question that is occupying the attention of many scholai's 

 is, how is it possible to date these documents ? One phase of this ques- 

 tion has been the area of the special research for which the American 

 Philosophical Society has provided the writer its generous help. We 

 have already seen how the pottery from the cave can be dated as a 

 result of the scientific development in that field during the past 60 

 years. This method is not entirely satisfactory,^^ however, since it 

 suggests only an approximate period for the deposit; and besides, 

 a few scholars refuse to admit that the scrolls were ever in the cave, 

 since they were discovered by ignorant Bedouins. Such a point of 

 view is absurd, however, for the writer has found one fragment of the 

 "Manual of Discipline" among those found by the excavators of the 

 cave, and the script of all the fragments and the scrolls is amazingly 

 homogeneous. 



The radioactive carbon-14 tests applied to some of the cloth from 

 the cave added to the archeological evidence for a general date between 

 the second century B. C. and the second century A. D. 



Some scholars believe that the only way the scrolls can be dated is 

 by their contents — that is, their peculiarities of grammer, spelling, 



• Trever, John C, Identification of tlie Aramaic fourth scroll from 'Aln Feshkha, Bull. 

 Amer. Schools Orient. Res., vol. 115, pp. 8-10, October 1949. 



"Cross, Frank M., Jr., The newly discovered scrolls in the Hebrew University Museum 

 In Jerusalem, Bibl. Archaeol., vol. 12, No. 2, pp. 36-46, May 1949. 



"G. L. Harding (Palestine Expl. Quart., January-April 1951, p. 105) tells of the former 

 uncertainty of dating first-centuries B. C. and A. D. pottery, but the excavations of this 

 Bite and those of New Testament Jericho (Tulfll Abfl el-'Alftyiq) have added significantly to 

 this field of knowledge. 



