GREAT SCOTT! THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS, MCGILL UNIVERSITY, AND THE CANADIAN MEDIA JAQUELINE S. DU TOIT JASON KALMAN University of South Africa University of the Free State Introduction Over the past fifty-five years, two sometimes competing, sometimes complementary elements have informed and shaped Canadians’ knowledge of the Dead Sea Scrolls. First is the overwhelming influ- ence of international, especially American, press coverage, which has shaped the Canadian media’s portrayal of the manuscript finds. In conjunction with this, however, is the occasional development of a uniquely Canadian angle on scrolls scholarship. In the first two decades after the discovery of the scrolls, the distinctively Canadian perspective was due largely to one man, Prof. R.B.Y. Scott of McGill University, who employed the Canadian press to spread word of the scrolls and thus generate funds for the attempted purchase of Cave 4 material by McGill University in 1954. In the 1990s, the media itself took the initiative but by this point had several Canadian Scrolls scholars to whom it could turn for insight. This paper focuses on Scott’s attempted purchase of some Cave 4 scrolls and his use of the media in that effort. His initiative made him an immediate insider, insofar as the funding he secured helped expand and preserve the unity of the scrolls collection and positioned McGill for exclusive rights to study a portion of the finds. At the same time, his endeavor also democratized Dead Sea Scrolls research at an early stage, as he sought not to titillate but to inform the general public of the significance of the finds and to expand the scholarly effort to Canadian shores. However, since Scott had focused scrolls publicity around that purchase and the purchase was ultimately unsuccessful, and since Scott himself moved on to Princeton during the period, the Canadian press lost its inside authority and its interest in the scrolls. The episode was subsequently all but forgotten until the 1990s, when Canadian © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2005 Dead Sea Discoveries 12, 1 Also available online – www.brill.nl