After 2,000 years, a 121-line religious text has been awarded a copyright by a Jerusalem court.
The copyright belongs to Professor Elisha Qimron of Ben-Gurion University, who over 11 years painstakingly reconstructed the text, known as MMT, from fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
On Monday, the Jerusalem District Court awarded Qimron $44,000 in damages for an unauthorized reprinting of his reconstructed text.
The ruling blazed legal ground internationally in the field of copyright law, as well as setting what is believed to be the highest penalties ever awarded in Israel for mental anguish.
The loser in the ruling is Hershel Shanks, president of the Biblical Archeological Society, which published “A Facsimile Edition of the Dead Sea Scrolls.”
A translation of MMT, as reconstructed by Qimron, was included in Shanks’ introduction to that edition, which included reproductions of more than 1,700 fragments of the scrolls.
MMT is couched as a letter from the “Teacher of Righteousness,” believed to be the founder of the Qumran sect, which wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls, to the “Evil Priest” in Jerusalem, presumably the high priest of the Temple-centered mainstream Judaism of the time.
The letter enumerates the disagreements over Jewish law that lay at the center of the schism between the two groups. It is consequently considered one of the most important fragments of the scrolls, which were first discovered in 1947 in caves near Qumran, not far from the Dead Sea.
At the center of Judge Dalia Dorner’s ruling was the finding that Qimron had engaged in substantial creative work in assembling more than a hundred fragments from what had been six different manuscripts of the text, and in interpolating what he believed to be missing portions of the document.
But is the ruling good for scholarship?
That question divides the parties to the lawsuit as sharply as the “Teacher of Righteousness” was split from the “Evil Priest” over such questions as the ritual purity of animal hides.
“My first judgment is that it’s a real blow for scholarship,” said Shanks, who also edits the society’s magazine, Biblical Archeology Review.
Shanks said he understood the ruling as meaning “that if another scholar wants to work on something that’s been reconstructed by another scholar, he should get that first scholar’s permission or face a lawsuit.”
‘VICTORY FOR ACADEMIC FREEDOM’?
On the other hand, one of Qimron’s lawyers, Zachary Grayson, presented the ruling as “a tremendous victory for academic freedom,” since scholars would now feel free to circulate their preliminary work without fearing that somebody would beat them to publication.
He said that the copyright ruling would not prevent other scholars from quoting MMT in their own research.
“Everyone uses the work of others in scholarship, but we have to give credit for others for their work and ideas,” said Qimron.
It is the issue of first publication rights that underlies the central schism between Qimron and Shanks.
Shanks had led those arguing that the original team of scholars officially appointed to reconstruct the Dead Sea Scrolls was dragging its feet on publishing its findings.
The publication of the Facsimile Edition was announced at the time as a blow against the alleged “monopoly” being held on the ancient scrolls.
The lawsuit regarding MMT is a separate issue. But Qimron first began working on MMT with John Strugnell who headed the team and was a particular target of Shanks’ criticism.
The judge in Israel ruled that two scholars who helped Shanks prepare the book for publication, Robert Eisenman and James Robinson, were likewise guilty of the copyright infringement.
But she ruled that the actual payments should be made by Shanks, who had initiated publication.
Shanks said he would likely appeal the ruling.
(Contributing to this report was JTA correspondent Hugh Orgel in Tel Aviv.)
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