John Trever, 90, Photographer First To Document Dead Sea Scrolls
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John Trever, the American scholar who photographed the Dead Sea Scrolls in Jerusalem in 1948, died Saturday at his home in Lake Forest, Calif. He was 90.
It was by chance that Trever happened to be in Jerusalem doing unrelated research when Father Boutros Sowmy brought several scrolls to the American School of Oriental Research in February 1948 that were said to have been found in a cave the year before by a Bedouin shepherd.
Although he was there to do post-doctorate studies on biblical flora, Trever was also experienced in photographing ancient scrolls and quickly took pictures of the finds. He had immediately recognized a similarity between the scrolls’ script and that of the Nash Papyrus, at the time the oldest known biblical manuscript.
Trever, who earned his doctorate in old testament studies from Yale in 1943, was doing research while on sabbatical from Drake University.
He is credited as being the first American scholar to come in contact with the scrolls in the James VanderKam and Peter Flint book “The Meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls” (2002).
His photos continue to appear widely in books and articles on them.
Trever spent much of his life lecturing and writing books on the scrolls, as well as returning to the holy land from time to time to take part in archaeological digs.
Among his books were “Scrolls from Qumran Cave One,” “The Untold Story of Qumran,” and “The Dead Sea Scrolls: A Personal Account.”
