Dead Sea Scrolls

April 1947, approximately

At around April 1947 — no exact day is securely documented — scrolls said to have been found by Ta'amireh Bedouin near Qumran entered the Bethlehem antiquities trade. Khalil Iskander Shahin, known as Kando, and George Isha'ya brought them to the attention of the Syrian Orthodox Metropolitan of Jerusalem, Athanasius Yeshue Samuel.

The manuscript shown to Samuel is now identified as the Community Rule. He became interested in seeing and acquiring the others.

A private transaction, not a discovery announcement

This was circulation and attempted appraisal among dealers and church figures, not a public announcement or a definitive scholarly authentication. Several people Samuel consulted initially judged the manuscripts medieval or of little value.

The first group ultimately comprised seven scrolls: four passed through Kando to Samuel, and three through another Bethlehem dealer, Salahi, to the Hebrew University archaeologist Eleazar Lipa Sukenik, who was the first scholar to recognise their antiquity.

How much of the story is later recollection

Published accounts disagree over whether the first find occurred in 1946, early 1947, spring 1947 or earlier; the names, the lost-animal story and the sequence of visits also vary. The familiar image of a stone breaking a jar comes from later recollections rather than an eyewitness record.

Recent scholarship warns that the antiquities-market scrolls' exact physical connection to the fragments later excavated from Cave 1 is less certain than general accounts suggest.

The public announcement came a year after the month traditionally attached to the scrolls becoming known. John C. Trever photographed three of Samuel's scrolls in February 1948, William F. Albright's influential authentication followed in March, and Millar Burrows issued the general press release on 11 April 1948.