John C. Trever

Who was John C. Trever?

John C. Trever was a biblical scholar and archaeologist, who was involved in the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Trever received a degree from Yale Divinity School and a Ph.D. in Old Testament studies from Yale Graduate School. He did post-doctoral studies in archaeology through the American School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem.

He became the first American scholar to see fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the Spring of 1948. At the time Trever was filling in for Millar Burrows, the director at the American Schools of Oriental Research. He was contacted by a representative of Mar Samuel of St. Mark's Assyrian Orthodox Monastery who desired to authenticate three scrolls that we now know had been purchased from Kando, a Syrian-Christian antiquities dealer in Bethlehem. Trever, an experienced photographer, photographed the scrolls, 1QIsaiahA, 1QpHabukkuk, and 1QS, and immediately sent copies to Near East scholar William F. Albright, who recognized them as the "greatest MS discovery of modern times!”