Elisha Qimron

Currently, he is a 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.

During the late 1970s and the early 1980s, many scholars felt frustrated at the delay in publishing the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Some also complained about the proprietary attitude of some of Strugnell's team toward the scrolls that they were working on, which made access to them difficult, if not impossible, in some cases.

Hershel Shanks, of the Biblical Archaeology Society, decided that the reconstructions of the Dead Sea Scrolls should be made available to scholars.