Let me return to 1951. While I was furiously working on my doctorate, I received a visit from one of de Vaux's young Jerusalem collaborators, Dominique Barthélemy, who informed me about the yet unrevealed novelties resulting from the start of the archaeological excavation of Qumran and the discovery by the Bedouin of further scroll caves. On the promise that his identity would be kept secret, he let me use the valuable information he disclosed. So I completed the first ever doctoral thesis on the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1952, which among many other things identified the mid-second century BC Maccabee brothers, Jonathan and Simon, as the opponents of the Teacher of Righteousnes, founder of the Qumran community, a theory that soon became mainstream opinion among scholars. However, before sending my manuscript to the printers, I set sail for Israel to gain first-hand experience of the Scrolls.

The great adventure started badly. I was unable to inspect the manuscripts of the Hebrew University; Professor Sukenik was by then gravely ill and died the following year. So I was forced to opt for the riskier alternative, which entailed an illegal crossing from Israel to Jordan with false documents. I spent four weeks in Arab East Jerusalem at Roland de Vaux's Ecole Biblique. At the school, I was greeted by my "secret informant", Barthélemy, and also made friends with the man who was to become the greatest decipherer of Qumran manuscripts, the Pole Joseph Milik. The two young scholars were engaged on editing the fragments discovered in Cave 1. They generously permitted me to study the texts and we shared our ideas about the Scrolls. While there, I also witnessed Bedouin nervously approaching de Vaux and pulling out from under their burnous matchboxes filled with freshly looted scroll fragments which they tried to sell to him. Before leaving Jordan, I had the privilege of making my first pilgrimage to Qumran. After only a single season of digging, the site was very different from what it looks like today. Throughout my stay, Father de Vaux appeared kind and helpful. I was soon to discover his other face.

My book, Les Manuscrits du Désert de Juda (The Manuscripts of the Judaean Desert), published at the end of 1953, was warmly acclaimed in the French press. I was floating in the clouds, but was soon catapulted down to earth by Father de Vaux, the top man in the field. On receiving the copy of the book I sent him and reading in the foreword my thanks to the school and himself, he bitterly reproached me for publishing "friendly" information that was not for release. He even added that simply by mentioning my visit to the school, I gave undue authority to my statements, some of which were inexact. Totally shattered, I asked him to point out my errors as the second edition of the book was shortly due to appear, but he declined to do so as it would have taken up too much of his time. This reaction of de Vaux gave a foretaste of things to come during his dictatorial tenure as chief editor of the Scrolls. Nothing was ethical or correct unless it bore his seal of approval.