When with the help of the indefatigable Bedouin, ten further caves disgorged their manuscripts, the Barthélemy-Milik cottage industry could no longer cope with the accumulated material. So in 1953/54 de Vaux's brainchild, the "international and interconfessional" (though Jew-free) team of editors was created. Its privileged members were to take charge of the fragments, including the colossal heap retrieved in Cave 4. Barth-élemy having pulled out, the brilliant Milik became the pillar of the group and seven further, mostly young, researchers were recruited two from France, two from the US, two from Britain and one from Germany. There was no supervisory body to oversee the performance of the team. They and de Vaux were a law unto themselves. Last, but not least, no proper funding was raised for the continuation of the project. Worst of all, de Vaux set up a "closed shop" - access to the unpublished texts was denied to Hebraists from the outside world until the team had completed their editorial work. This far from satisfactory arrangement did not bode well for the future.

Yet at the beginning the prospects were not gloomy. During the 1950s, the still enthusiastic team assembled, transcribed and largely identified the hundreds of original works and a word concordance was prepared on index cards. Preliminary publications filled the pages of scholarly journals and by 1962 the contents of the "minor" caves (2-3, 5-10) appeared in DJD III. It comprises insignificant texts with the exception of the Copper Scroll with its list of 64 hiding places crammed with silver and gold. A maverick member of de Vaux's team promptly undertook a treasure hunt, but came back empty-handed. Two factors had a deleterious effect on the editorial project. The lack of finance obliged the members of the team to seek academic appointments away from Jerusalem and turn into part-time or hardly-any-time editors. (Two Harvard University professors practised slow-motion editing by proxy, subletting their unpublished texts to clever graduate students.) In June 1967, the Israeli victory in the Six Day War completely altered the political circumstances. De Vaux and most of the members of the editorial team were pro-Arab, and at the prospect of the Israeli archaeological establishment becoming the chief authority in Scroll matters, de Vaux withdrew to his tent and until his death in 1971 the project remained at a standstill. Only one slim and poor-quality volume dealing with the massive Cave 4 material was published during de Vaux's life.

In 1972, the ill-qualified Pierre Benoit, another French Dominican who was not a Hebraist, inherited de Vaux's editorial mantle. Playing the gentlemen, the Israeli archaeological establishment short-sightedly abstained from interfering. I felt it was my turn to step into the breach. By then, I held the senior post in Jewish Studies at Oxford. Having since 1962 The Dead Sea Scrolls in English to my credit, I was in a position to approach Oxford University Press, a body with real muscle as they were the publishers of the Scrolls. The head of the press, the great Greek papyrologist C.H. Roberts, was convinced at once and told Benoit to get a move on. The weak chief editor made a semblance of effort. Half of his collaborators simply did not reply and the other half politely promised delivery of the goods between 1974 and 1976, but nothing happened. In despair, I uttered in 1977 my oft-quoted soundbite about "the academic scandal par excellence of the 20th century".