As you may have noticed, the story of Dead Sea Scrolls is populated with a number of strange characters. Perhaps the most interesting of this odd lot is the mysterious Mr. Z.

To his dying day, Yigael Yadin refused to reveal the identity of the man who led him on a wild goose chase for the greatest of the all the Dead Sea manuscripts: The Temple Scroll.

In 1960, Yadin, having given up his career as commanding general of the Israel Defense Forces, launched a new life as a Hebrew University archaeologist, following in the footsteps of his revered father and predecessor, Professor E. L. Sukenik. In 1960, Yadin was contacted by a Christian minister from Virginia with a fabulous claim. The minister told Yadin that he could supply Yadin with a large, but unspecified number of Dead Sea scrolls via contacts he had with an antiquities dealer in Jordanian-held Bethlehem.

Skeptical at first, Yadin began a two-year correspondence with the minister, whom he would subsequently describe as Mr. Z. After all, the Cave 1 Dead Sea scrolls had been held in Bethlehem before they made their way to Jerusalem in 1947; perhaps a new cache of scrolls had been discovered by the Bedouin. As Yadin's dialog with the minister wore on, his skepticism grew. The number of scrolls and the estimated prices bounced around wildly from one letter to the next. Was this some kind of con game? In the end, the minister admitted he had access to only one scroll, but what a scroll it was. For a mere $10,000 deposit, the minister would obtain a sample torn off from the scroll itself. Yadin sent the $10,000 and duly received the sample. Clearly the sample was real. If it belonged to a complete or nearly complete scroll, it would represent a truly important research discovery.

Yadin's dialog with the Virginia minister petered out in 1962. Mr. Z never came through with the goods. Possessing a scrap that cost him $10,000, Yadin reluctantly concluded that he had lost this round in the continuing search for more Dead Sea scrolls.

The Six Day War of 1967 offered Yadin a second chance at the mysterious scroll once proffered by the mysterious Mr. Z. By war's end, Bethlehem was in Israeli hands, and Yadin was sure that the Bethlehem dealer was none other than the infamous Kando, the same man who had helped fence the Cave 1 scrolls. After some surveillance work courtesy of the Israeli Army, Kando's house was raided. Scroll scraps were found hidden behind framed family photos and in other clever places. Under the floor of his house, in a simple box, the Israelis discovered the treasure from which Yadin's $10,000 scrap had come: the Temple Scroll (for more on the Temple Scroll, go to our Session 4 topic, A Journey Through the Scrolls). Although significant portions were missing, additional fragments of other copies of the Temple Scroll from Cave 4 filled in at least some of the gaps.

Of course, Kando made quite a noise about the Israelis 'stealing' the scroll which he had obtained from bedouin who had stolen it from Cave 11. In the end, the Israelis agreed to pay him what was considered fair market value for the damaged scroll: $105,000.

Again, Yigael Yadin had played a pivotal role in gaining ancient Jewish religious texts for the State of Israel. He also had the honor and challenge of translating and publishing the Temple Scroll, a task which he completed only months before his untimely death in 1984 at age 67.

But what about Mr. Z? The mysterious minister turned out to be Joe Uhrig, a Virginia preacher who was one of America's founding fathers of television Christian evangelism. Falling on hard times, he sold his televangelism ministry to one Jerry Falwell, and the rest is, well, history. By the way, Joe never returned the $10,000 deposit to Yigael Yadin.

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