ABSTRACT
The scholarly community became polarized between supporters of Qimron, who jealously defended the exclusive rights of the dedicated lifetime researchers, and those who argued, like Shanks, for the liberal and unconstrained publication and dissemination of knowledge and wisdom. The community of scholars, and beyond, remained haunted by the case for years to come, not merely as a legal precedent worthy of study by scholars and courts of law, but as affecting the entire domain of Dead Sea Scrolls scholarship. The post-traumatic reaction to the litigation evinced not only the legal interest of lawyers per se, for it is doubtful that a litigation between an Israeli professor and an American publisher would have attracted so much lasting and wide-range interest, had it not been for the materials of the Dead Sea Scrolls that were at stake.
