The First Photographs of the Qumran Cave I Scrolls

THE photographing of the three Qumran Cave I scrolls with which this volume is concerned was fraught with difficulties, both technical and political, that have been elucidated elsewhere.¹ Only a brief summary of those factors, therefore, needs to be included here; but some additional notes are provided for the sake of the record.

1QIs^a—The Great Isaiah Scroll

The first attempt to record 1QIs^a was made at the American School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem on February 21, 1948, in the presence of the Syrian Metropolitan Athanasius Y. Samuel and his assistant, Father Butrus Sowmy, whose permission had made the work possible. Only three dozen sheets of suitable film were available; thus, it was immediately apparent that two or three columns of text had to be recorded on each sheet.² As a result, the magnification necessary to restore the text to natural size from those negatives was too great to produce prints adequate for publication.³ Efforts to gain permission and supplies

1. See John C. Trever, The Untold Story of Qumran (Old Tappan, New Jersey: Fleming H. Revell, 1965; hereafter USQ). Details of the account are scattered through chapters 3–11, and on page 127.
2. The recording was done with the author’s ground-glass focusing "Recomar-33" camera, which used 9 x 12 cm cut film. Its lens was a 135 mm Schneider Xenar f/4.5, used mostly at f/11, which may account for the lack of definition in the corners of the "Panatomic-X" films. Two No. 1 photoflood lamps provided the illumination. The system is illustrated opposite page 49 in USQ (or facing p. 15 in the second printing).
3. From the writer’s previous experience, "Panatomic-X"—a slow-speed, fine-grain, panchromatic film producing good contrast—had proved most satisfactory for manuscript copying where the text was as clear as it then was on the Qumran Cave I scrolls. Later, it was discovered that infrared film was better for the more disintegrated scrolls and fragments, because it could even recover texts which had been completely obscured by the disintegration of the leather. The writer has never felt that any great advantage would be achieved by using infrared film with these three manuscripts, except for 1QIs^a Cols. I–IX or XII and a few points of textual uncertainty elsewhere. The opportunity to experiment and work with the scrolls under ideal conditions, however, was never made available to him.