The most striking feature of the post-2002 Dead Sea Scrolls scandal is the pervading negligence. The trade in unprovenanced manuscripts is dependent on actors authenticating, introducing, marketing, facilitating sales, brokering, legitimizing dubious acquisition, defending illicit trade, lending professional authority, publishing, composing provenance narratives, and pumping up prices. Without scholarly involvement in these endeavors, the market in the post-2002 fragments would be unimaginable.For the most part, I think the criticisms in this essay are fair. Some of them do involve seeing suspicious patterns in retrospect that would have been harder to see at the time.
It seems that many, perhaps most, of the unprovenanced, supposed, scroll fragments that surfaced during this period are fakes. But perhaps not all. For example, this apparent Bar Kokhba-era scroll was seized by the Israeli authorities in 2009. I've heard nothing about it since and Prof. Justnes does not mention it in his "Exhausting" Chronology. Is it genuine?
If there are genuine scrolls among the fakes, part of the conversation involves how to isolate them.
For some of my own thoughts on how to deal with unprovenanced antiquities, see here and links. For more on the subject see here and here and links.
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