Having been involved in editing the Dead Sea Scrolls since 1954, John Strugnell was appointed editor-in-chief of the Scrolls project in 1984 and held the post for six years until compelled to resign in controversial circumstances in which he was accused of anti-semitism. He was a professor of Christian origins at Harvard Divinity School, 1966-91.

Born in Barnet in 1930, Strugnell was educated at St Paul's School, London, and went on to take a double first in classics and Semitics at Oxford, laying the foundation for a prodigious mastery of ancient texts. Even though he had not taken a doctoral degree, he was one of two British scholars invited to join the international team of elite scholars entrusted with editing the Dead Sea Scrolls at the tender age of 23 in 1954.

(The scrolls had been discovered in the Judean desert, near Qumran, south of Jericho, between 1947 and 1952, They were eventually shown to contain fragments of about 900 texts in Hebrew and Aramaic from around the time of Jesus, and they revolutionised the study of the Bible, Ancient Judaism and early Christianity). The assignment was a mixed blessing. On the one hand it propelled him into the front rank of international scholars at an age when most scholars were beginning their graduate studies. On the other, it involved him in a maddeningly difficult task of piecing together tiny fragments of ancient texts, in the company of a team of older men, some (not all!) of whom had severe personal and psychological problems.

The task of editing the Dead Sea Scrolls was funded initially by the Rockefeller foundation, but the money ran out after a few years. For the academic year 1956-57, Strugnell took a position at the Oriental Institute of Chicago, where he met his future wife, Cécile Pierlot, whose father had been Prime Minister of Belgium during the Second World War.

They lived in Jerusalem until he took a position at Duke University, 1960-66, although he spent summers in Jerusalem. In 1966 he accepted an appointment at Harvard Divinity School. There he became a professor of Christian origins, a position he held until his retirement in 1991.

Strugnell continued to work on the Scrolls in the summer in Jerusalem after his appointment at Harvard, but like his Harvard colleague Frank Moore Cross, who was also a member of the international team of Dead Sea Scrolls editors, he now had new responsibilities, and turned his mind to new tasks. In the 1970s he devoted his energies to the study of the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, a collection of Ancient Jewish writings from the time of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were preserved in Greek, Latin, Ethiopic and Syriac. During this time he directed a series of dissertations of young scholars who would go on to become leaders in the field of Second Temple Judaism (that is, Judaism between approximately 500BC and AD100),

In the early 1970s, however, it became apparent that Strugnell suffered from manic depression and alcohol problems. His marriage broke down in 1974, and he began to spend more time in Jerusalem. Nonetheless, he was appointed editor-in-chief of the Scrolls project in 1984. Everyone knew that organisation was not his forte, but he knew more about the corpus of Dead Sea Scrolls than anyone else.

The publication of the Scrolls had proceeded at a glacial pace since the early 1950s. The task was simply too big for the very small group of scholars to whom it was entrusted, some of whom had personal problems while the others had multiple responsibilities.

Strugnell made some significant advances. On the one hand, he entrusted some texts for publication to some exceptionally talented graduate students, such as Carol Newsom, now of Emory University, and Eileen Schuller, now of McMaster University. On the other hand, he invited Israeli scholars to participate in the editorial process. When the original editorial team had been formed, Qumran, where the scrolls had been found, was in the territory of Jordan, and Jewish scholars were excluded from the process. When the Scrolls came under Israeli control in 1967, the Israeli Government honoured the original editorial assignments. Strugnell was the first general editor of the Scrolls to invite Israeli and other Jewish scholars to join the process.

It was somewhat ironic, then, that he was was removed from his position as editor in circumstances that led to his being branded anti-Semitic. In 1990, when he was off his medication and inebriated, he gave an interview to a reporter from the Israeli newspaper, Ha'aretz, in which he was quoted as saying that Judaism was “a horrible religion” which “should not exist”. There was an immediate outcry, and an editorial in The New York Times condemned him. He was removed from his position as editor, and forced to take early retirement on medical grounds from Harvard.

Whether at some level the comments represented his actual views is debatable. What is incontrovertible, however, is that he maintained good relations with several Jewish and Israeli scholars, some of whom signed a letter in support of him, which was published in the Chicago Tribune. Emanuel Tov, who succeeded him as editor-in-chief of the Dead Sea Scrolls, continued to visit him and speak kindly of him in later years. His loudest critics were people who did not know him well, if at all. His colleagues and students, Jewish as well as Christian, testified that he was without personal malice, and that he was unfailingly generous and helpful to them regardless of their religion and ethnicity.

Strugnell was not a prolific scholar, but he had enormous influence on his field. In part this was through the students he trained. But he was also involved in the initial publication of some extremely important texts, which revealed aspects of Ancient Judaism that were previously unknown. These included the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifices (Shirot 'olat ha-Shabbat, an important document of ancient Jewish mysticism); an unpublished Halakhic Letter from Qumran, later known as 4QMMT (from the Hebrew Miqsat Ma'asei ha-Torah; an important document of early Jewish legal interpretation) with Elisha Qimron; and a large wisdom (sapiential) text known as 4Q Instruction with Daniel J. Harrington.

Strugnell, who suffered from cancer, is survived by two sons and three daughters.

John Strugnell, editor-in-chief of the Dead Sea Scrolls project, 1984-90, was born on on May 25, 1930. He died on November 30, 2007, aged 77