HANAN ESHEL, his Leviticus scroll find, and the conflicts with the IAA are covered in Haaretz ("Questioning a scientist's true intentions"). It's a long and rambling article that describes the discovery and its implications for the study of the Bar Kokhba revolt in some detail, but here is the section on the conflict:

In September 2005, police investigators accompanied by a representative of the Antiquities Authority came to Eshel's home in Jerusalem and announced that he was suspected of trading in antiquities and in buying stolen property - the parchment fragments. The police searched his home, confiscated this and that, ordered Eshel to relinquish his passport and brought him for further questioning to the in Jerusalem police headquarters in the Russian Compound. A month later, he was summoned for more questioning and when he left, he was pounced on by reporters and photographers covering the juicy affair of the professor suspected of criminal activity.

Dozens of Eshel's colleagues, Israeli academics of repute, signed a letter published as an ad in Haaretz protesting the IAA's actions. Eshel had "rescued a scroll that could have been lost," they wrote, and "treating him like a criminal was vengeful, wrong and unfair." Never before had a member of the scientific establishment been treated in such a way, they added.

The IAA responded with an official announcement that stated it regretted that Eshel had "as a private person, broken the law, been caught and was now doing everything in his power to save his skin, including through the cynical exploitation of his colleagues."

The abusive language toward the professor reached a crescendo in a Yedioth Ahronoth headline: "The Antiquities Authority is positive: Eshel's next finding will be the defendant's docket."

Two years have passed and no charges have been filed against Eshel. The investigation seems to have stopped. The tempest in the teacup has dissipated. Some researchers believe that the IAA's battle against robbers and traders was brutally pursued at the expense of a scientist who had no ill intentions or expectation of monetary gain. Anybody who knows the antiquities market in general, and that of Jerusalem in particular, knows that it's a tricky arena. There are plenty of researchers held in the highest esteem who traded in antiquities, in peace.

The only ones to pay a price so far are the three Bedouin who found the fragments and sold them. They were arrested, tried and heavily fined.

Eshel feels bruised, but thinks that at the end of the day, it worked out. He is proud to have brought the pieces to the State.

Yet there's one person who isn't satisfiYet there's one person who isn't satisfied: Arnold Spaer, a lawyer and a member of the management boards at the Islamic Art Museum in Jerusalem and the Hecht Museum in Haifa, and a member of the Israel Museum.

Eshel told Spaer that the the IAA had cut segments from the parchment margins to verify that they were genuine. Spaer promptly complained to the police against the IAA.

Why did the authority do that? Probably, in the pursuit of another investigation into forged antiquities. A photograph of the fragments was found in the computer of Oded Golan, an antiquities trader from Tel Aviv who is accused of forging antiquities, and is in the middle of his trial. It is possible, however, that the Bedouin who found the Leviticus fragments contacted Golan before showing them to Eshel and Porat.

The latest twist in the affair is that Spaer has demanded that the Jerusalem District Prosecutor's Office address his complaint about the scroll's vandalization. The prosecution told him that it has more important things to do. To which Spaer replied, "When Dorfman and Amir Ganot" - the robbery prevention director at the Antiquities Authority - "complained at the time against Eshel, in respect to buying fragments of the scroll, the full investigative mechanism of the police and the Antiquities Authority went into action, including confiscation of documents, multiple interrogations and informing the press. Yet in this case, which is 10 times more serious, no response to the complaint is evident." Could a double standard be coming into play?, the lawyer suggested.

The IAA comments, "Following the complaint against Eshel and others on suspicion of allegedly violating the Antiquities Law, the Israel Police conducted an investigation, at the end of which the case was transferred to the Prosecutor's Office for handling." The authority added that acts to enforce the Antiquities Law against any and all offenders.

There's also a howler earlier in the article, where it says that Josephus wrote on the Bar Kokhba revolt. He wrote on the Great Revolt of 66-70, but he was long dead by the time of Bar Kokhba.

For earlier coverage of this story see here, here, here, here, here, and here.

UPDATE: Joseph I. Lauer writes the following on his e-mail list:

Many will note a confusing English translation of two sentences from the original Hebrew article. With my interpolations, the sentences should be understood to be stating: "There are any number of writings about the rebellion [that resulted in the destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple in 70 CE], including Josephus Flavius and other Jewish and Roman writers. But there are almost no relics of the [Bar-Kochba] rebellion."