U.S. Professor Confirms Find of Ancient Hebrew Bronze Scrolls

Prof. A. Henry Detweiler of Cornell University, chairman of the Jerusalem Committee of the American School of Oriental Research, confirmed this week-end a report that a pair of tightly rolled bronze sheets with a lengthy text engraved in Hebrew letters have been discovered in a cave near the Dead Sea.

The scrolls are now in Jerusalem in the possession of Pere Roland de Vaux and Dr. William L. Reed, directors of a French, American and Palestinian expedition to the Dead Sea caves. The indications are that the sheets may be important Old Testament documents, Professor Detweiler said. In the same region in 1947 were found parchment scrolls with a Hebrew text of the Book of Isaiah and other Biblical manuscripts. Because the new sheets are of bronze, Professor Detweiler suggested that they might contain material regarded by the ancients as of the greatest importance.

Only a fragment of the text on the tightly rolled metal sheets is visible, according to the report received by Professor Detweiler. Until some technique to unroll the delicate scrolls without shattering them is devised it is impossible to do more than speculate about the find, he said. However, other scholars have described the discovery as “a most sensational find. “Prof. Millar Burrows, Winkley Professor of Biblical Theology at Yale University, said it was “surprising, quite new and totally unexpected.”