Elisha Qimron

Elisha Qimron (Hebrew: אלישע קימרון; born 5 February 1943) is an academic who studies ancient Hebrew, with specialization in the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Early life and education Qimron was born in 1943 in Tel Aviv in Mandatory Palestine, and grew up in Hanita, a kibbutz in northern Israel. He received his undergraduate degree and master's degree from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he also earned his Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1976.

Career Qimron is an emeritus professor in the Department of Hebrew Language at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, in Israel. For several decades, he has been one of the team of international scholars working on the Dead Sea Scrolls, particularly on the texts found in Cave 4 at Qumran.

In 1979 Qimron was asked by John Strugnell, the editor-in-chief of the Dead Sea Scrolls publication team, to assist in completing long-overdue work on the Halakhic Letter (4QMMT) on which Strugnell had been working alone since 1959. The work on the fragments was eventually completed and published in 1994. Qimron was the first Israeli scholar on the team.

Hershel Shanks, of the Biblical Archaeology Society, decided that the reconstructions of the Dead Sea Scrolls should be made available to scholars. In 1992, he published the two-volume A Facsimile Edition of the Dead Sea Scrolls. It included, without permission, material on the Halakhic Letter (4QMMT) that Qimron had been working on for some 11 years. Qimron had even given the document its title.

Qimron decided to sue the Biblical Archaeology Society for breaching his copyright on the grounds that the research it had published was his intellectual property, as he had reconstructed about 40% of the published text. Such reconstruction is unique in the sense that if the original photographs had been given to 100 researchers, that number of different reconstructions would be made.

In 1993, Judge Dalia Dorner of the Israeli Supreme Court awarded Qimron the highest compensation allowed by law for aggravation in compensation against Shanks and others. A 2000 appeal in front of Judge Aharon Barak and colleagues upheld the verdict.

Honors and awards

In 2018, Qimron was selected to receive the Israel Prize in Jewish studies for his work on the Dead Sea Scrolls. He has also won several other awards including the Robert and Michel Asraf Academy Prize, the Zalman Shazar Prize for the Study of the History of Israel, and the Mifal HaPais Landau Prize for Science and Research. Elisha Qimron. (2013). The Dead Sea Scrolls: The Hebrew Writings. Volume 2. Yad Ben-Zvi Press. Elisha Qimron. (2014). The Dead Sea Scrolls: The Hebrew Writings. Volume 3: Between Bible and Mishnah. Yad Ben-Zvi Press.