Dead Sea Scroll fragments to be sold off

A section of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Picture: AP

Nearly 70 years after the discovery of the world’s oldest biblical manuscripts, the Palestinian family who originally sold them to scholars and institutions is now quietly marketing the leftovers - fragments the family says it has kept in a Swiss safe deposit box.

Most of these scraps are barely postage-stamp-sized, and some are blank. But in the last few years, evangelical Christian collectors and institutions in the U.S. have forked out millions of dollars for a piece.

The Israeli government, which considers the scrolls part of the country’s heritage, has threatened to seize any more pieces that hit the market.

“I told Kando many years ago, as far as I’m concerned, he can die with those scrolls,” said Amir Ganor, head of the authority’s anti-looting squad, speaking of William Kando, who maintains his family’s Dead Sea Scrolls collection. “The scrolls’ only address is the State of Israel.”

Kando says his family offered its remaining fragments to the antiquities authority and other Israeli institutions, but they could not afford them.

“If anyone is interested, we are ready to sell,” Kando told The Associated Press, sitting in the Jerusalem antiquities shop he inherited from his late father. “These are the most important things in the world.”

History

The dead sea scrolls were discovered in 1947, in caves by the Dead Sea east of Jerusalem.

Scholarly debate over the scrolls’ meaning continues to stir high-profile controversy, while the Jordanian and Palestinian governments have lodged their own claims of ownership.

But few know of the recent gold rush for fragments - or Israel’s intelligence-gathering efforts to track their sale.

Written mostly on animal skin parchment about 2,000 years ago, the manuscripts are the earliest copies of the Hebrew Bible ever found, and the oldest written evidence of the roots of Judaism and Christianity in the Holy Land.