TREVER, John C. 1915-2006

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born November 26, 1915, in Milwaukee, WI; died April 29, 2006, in Lake Forest, CA. Minister, educator, and author. A Methodist minister and professor of religion, Trever became famous for being the first Western scholar to photograph the Dead Sea Scrolls, which soon became a focus of his research work. Completing undergraduate work at the University of Southern California in 1937, he earned his B.D. from Yale in 1940, followed by a doctorate three years later. Ordained in 1940, he was an associate minister in Santa Monica, California, before entering academia. Trever taught the Old Testament at Drake University in the mid-1940s. In 1948, not long after joining the International Council of Religious Education as director of the English Bible department, he was in Jerusalem conducting research when the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered by a shepherd. Although he was there to study the flora of biblical times, Trever recognized the opportunity and rushed over to take pictures of the discovery. The photos have since been reproduced many times, since they are the best ones showing the scrolls in their original condition before attempts to restore them. Going on to teach at Morris Harvey College (now the University of Charleston) in the 1950s, Baldwin-Wallace College, beginning in 1959, and the Claremont School of Theology, Trever continued to write and lecture about the scrolls for many years. He would author such books as The Untold Story of Qumran (1965), Scrolls from Qumran Cave I (1972), and The Dead Sea Scrolls: A Personal Account (1977).

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New York Times, May 5, 2006, p. C12.