From yawen@enter.net Fri Jun 14 21:26:36 PDT 1996
Article: 43270 of alt.revisionism
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From: yawen@enter.net (Yale F. Edeiken)
Newsgroups: alt.revisionism
Subject: Moran Lies About the Dead Sea Scrolls -=- Part II
Date: 14 Jun 1996 03:05:30 GMT
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	In his post about the Dead Sea Scrolls gives an account of how the 
Dead Sea Scrolls came to be published by the Huntington Library.  He claims that 
this account -- which was described by the Director of the Huntington Library as 
"twisted and embellished" -- supposedly came from the Dr. William Moffett, then 
director of the library.  L'il Tommy told us:

	"The way the Huntington Library came into possession of the scroll 
copies was, a woman, Mrs. Lan . . . [sic] had copies and hired the library 
photographer to photograph them.  A dispute arose about payment and the 
photographer turned copies of the copies over to Mr. Moffet [sic], and he released 
them."

	Athough Dr. Moffett passed away in 1995 he is not silent.  Because of 
the controversy and attention surrounding the publication of the Scrolls he wrote a 
brief statement of what happened.  This is Dr. Moffett's account:

			---------------------

	In September 1990, William A. Moffett became the new director of the 
Huntington Library.  In becoming familiar with the library's collections, the Dead 
Sea Scroll photography was brought o his attention.

	The Huntington's Dead Sea Scrolls photo collection cosists of some 
three thousand master negatives of photographs taken of original fragments as 
well as duplicates made of the photographic archives at the Rockefeller Museum 
and the Shrine of the Book in Jerusalem.  The collection is believed to cover all of 
the Dead Sea Scrolls in official respositories, both unpublished and published 
materials.

	The photographs were made according to the highest archival and 
technical standards in a series of trips to Israel beginning in 1980 by Robert 
Schlosser, an expert in documentary photography.  He was contracted to do the 
work as a freelancer.  By coincidence, he was and continues to be an employee 
of teh Huntington Library.

	Mr. Sclosser was hired by Elizabeth Hay Bechtel, president of the 
Ancient Biblical Manuscript Center in Claremont.  As a philantropist and an 
enthusiast for the preservation of early culutral artifacts, Mrs. Bechtel was anxious 
to insure that the information contained in the Scrolls would not be jeopardized by 
war or natural catastrophe.  She not only persuaded Israeli officials to permit the 
Scrolls material to be photographed, she financed the photography and oversaw 
the entire operation.  She then arranged for one set of negatives to be depositied 
at Claremont's Ancient Bibilical Manuscript Center and a master set to be 
depositied in secure storage elsewhere.

	Then Mrs. Bechtel had a falling out with the Center.  To carry forward 
her interest she formed the Preservation Council.  In 1982 she negotiated an 
arrangement by which the master set of negatives was officially entrusted by the 
Preservation Council to the Huntington and housed in a specially constructed 
vault.

	The Huntington's expectation was that it would provide a secure and 
stable environment for the preservation of the photographs and not serve as a 
primary center for their study.  A duplicate set of negatives had been made for the 
Biblical Manuscript Center in nearby Claremont, so it was assumed that Biblical 
scholars would be able to satisfy their research needs there -- especially as the 
Huntington did and still does not have the specialized reference materials that 
Biblical scholars need.

			-----------------------

	The words of Dr. Moffett contradict those of L'il Tommy in every 
important detail from the name of the woman involved (a rather important detail 
once her name is revealed) and the fact that the Huntington did not haved copies 
of copies but copies of the original documents made with the permission of and 
under an agreement with the Israeli government.  While this might seem like a 
trivial mistake, it is, in reality, crucial for the understanding of the controversy and 
L'il Tommy's further lies.

	We now know that L'il tommy's account is dramatically different from the 
account given my the man he claims is his source.  So the question arises:

	L'il Tommy, where did you get you information?

	--YFE

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