Instead Golb, the Ludwig Rosenberger Professor of Jewish History and Civilization at the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute, will try to convince travelers that much of the information in the exhibit is wrong.

Golb, who describes himself broadly as a scholar of the Jewish people, has been a controversial figure in the world of Dead Sea Scrolls scholarship since 1995, when his book, "Who Wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls? -- The Search for the Secret of Qumran" (Scribner) was published.

In it, he goes against a scholarly consensus that has been at the forefront of scroll scholarship since the awe-inspiring documents' accidental discovery in 1947. That conventional wisdom holds that the scrolls were written by the Essenes, an ancient Jewish communal society of ascetic pacifists.

Golb contends instead that the scrolls were the work of individuals from many segments of the ancient Jewish world and that they were hidden near the Dead Sea, among other locations, by Jews fleeing the Roman army around 70 C.E.

Reviewers of the book said that Golb provoked an "academic earthquake" among scholars and others interested in the scrolls.

The book also tells a more modern story about the controversy and infighting among scroll experts and details the struggle by Golb and others to make the scrolls more widely available to scholars, students and the public.

In the last few years, the Chicago scholar's theory has been bolstered by the work of two leading Israeli archaeologists on the basis of 10 years of archaeological excavations at Qumran, where most of the scrolls were found and where the Essenes were said to have lived.

Still, Golb's theories remain controversial, and the current exhibit in San Diego and others that visited several U.S. cities (Chicago not among them) in 2006 and early 2007 are sure to fan the flames.

The first seven Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered by Bedouin shepherds in 1947 in caves in the village of Qumran, in the West Bank on the shores of the Dead Sea. Between that year and 1956, a total of 850 documents were unearthed from 11 caves in the area.

The scrolls, written primarily in Hebrew and Aramaic, with a few in Greek, include texts from the Hebrew Bible, commentary on the texts, information about daily life in the Second Temple period, writings on theology, war, discipline, religious practices, membership requirements of a sect that some believe to be the Essenes, and lists of hidden caches of treasures and weapons.

Carbon dating and other types of analysis have determined that the documents were written at various times between the middle of the second century B.C.E. and the first century C.E. The documents-some of which exist only as fragments-are the oldest biblical scrolls ever discovered and the only collection of contemporary writings to survive from the Second Temple period.

The story behind the discovery and dissemination of the scrolls is also a fascinating tale. Early on, only a small group of scholars was granted exclusive access to them. Chief among those was Dominican monk and archaeologist Father Roland de Vaux, a scholar at the Ecole Biblique in Jerusalem who excavated at Qumran from 1951 to 1956.

It was de Vaux's theory that the site served as a center and monastery for the Essenes, an ascetic Jewish communal sect living in caves in a settlement called Khirbet Qumran in the Judaean Wilderness near the shore of the Dead Sea.

Most scholars supported this conclusion, paving the way for years for what Golb calls wrong-headed thinking about the origin of the scrolls.

"All the thinking after the early 1950s was based on (de Vaux's) theory, but the scholars who followed him and supported him didn't call it a theory, they just spoke of it as a fact," Golb said during a recent conversation in his office at the Oriental Institute, which also houses the Oriental Institute Museum, which displays, among many other treasures of the ancient world, a Dead Sea Scroll fragment.

"There wasn't an encyclopedia entry written in the 1950s or '60s or even '70s where you didn't find the same thing: that the Dead Sea Scrolls were written by a sect, probably the Essenes, who lived at Qumran, and that's a statement (of fact)," he says.

Golb, on the other hand, beginning with articles he published from 1980 on and culminating in his 1995 book, argues that "this was a theory, and the theory was greatly weakened by new discoveries that were made after (de Vaux) expressed this view, in the later 1950s and '60s."

In the early 1960s, he says, archaeologists digging at Masada, near the bottom of the Dead Sea in a different location altogether from Qumran, found the same kinds of scrolls there.

Golb says that archaeologist Yigael Yadin, the son of Professor Eliezer Sukenik, who first proposed the Essene theory, suggested that the Essenes brought their civilization from Qumran to Masada. "That was a forced explanation, and scholars criticized him for it, but they themselves did not see the full picture," he says.

As the excavations progressed, unanswered questions about the scrolls arose, Golb says, and there were charges that de Vaux never published his full findings and even that he concealed artifacts that did not fit his theory.

For instance, de Vaux claimed that the Essenes were a monastic people living ascetic lives, yet pieces of jewelry and stone cosmetics containers were among the artifacts found at Qumran. De Vaux claimed that he found only ordinary pottery vessels there.

Yuval Peleg, one of the two archaeologists from the Israel Antiquities Authority team who supports Golb's theory, told the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz that de Vaux "simply ignored what didn't suit him."

Golb spent the 1969-70 academic year at Qumran and what he saw there, along with the evidence about scrolls being found at Masada, began to solidify his challenge to the conventional wisdom of de Vaux and most other scholars. But he had already begun to come up with alternative theories when he heard about the discovery of the Copper Scroll in the mid-1950s.

This unusual scroll consists of hammered copper, 12 columns in length, incised with text. "It described the hiding of artifacts-most of which are known from the early rabbinic literature as artifacts of the Temple-and along with that, the hiding of the scrolls," Golb says. "That scroll is crucial for revising our theories" because it shows that the scrolls were written elsewhere and hidden in the Judaean Wilderness instead of being written by people living there.

This scroll was not made public, Golb charges, because "Father de Vaux was aghast when this text was deciphered, and claimed it was a forgery.

"They never put it on display," he says. "Now it's on display in San Diego but without a translation."

In a paper titled "Fact and Fiction in Current Exhibitions of the Dead Sea Scrolls - A Critical Notebook for Viewers" that he has posted on his Web site, Golb writes that the notes for the San Diego exhibit state that it is not known whether the treasures the Copper Scroll describes are real or imaginary. Golb says the exhibit gives viewers a false impression by not presenting any parts of the scroll in translation or noting that a majority of scholars consider it and its contents to be authentic. (To read the article, go to oi.uchicago.edu, then click on "Explore Research" and search for "Dead Sea Scrolls" or "Norman Golb.")

Golb's own theory, then, holds that the scrolls were the work of many individuals and groups and came originally from Jerusalem. They were brought to Qumran and hidden in caves, he says, by Jews fleeing the Roman army during the Great Revolt, between 66 and 73 C.E. The Qumran complex, he claims, was not an Essene monastery, as earlier scholars claimed, but a fortress for Jews involved in the revolt. They hid the scrolls to ensure their survival during the fighting, he says.

Qumran, he says, was an ancient fort location, built in about 90 B.C.E. and strategically located to protect Jerusalem's eastern approach (it is only about 15 miles away from that city). What earlier scholars saw as Qumran's "scriptorium," where the scrolls were written, he believes was a meeting hall for a military garrison.

"Now that virtually all the scrolls are published, we can no longer say they were written just by Essenes," Golb says. "They were written by all kinds of Jews, mostly in Hebrew, some in Aramaic and in Greek, and they express a variety of ideas." Some of the authors of the scrolls disagree with other authors, he says, and scholars have authenticated by handwriting analysis that at least 500 different individuals are represented on the scrolls. That view "is not a brainstorm off the top of my head. It's part of my research, the investigations that I do," he says.

Golb himself was instrumental in freeing the scrolls from what he calls a small, insular group of scholars who wanted to keep the treasures under their own control, and in the early '90s, he organized an international congress on the scrolls under the auspices of the Oriental Institute and the New York Academy of Sciences to open the scholarship to more people.

Part of the problem, Golb says, is that after the first few volumes were published in the 1950s, "the team kind of lost their enthusiasm and nothing came out for years. We had to pressure them to get the rest of them published," an effort in which he was a leader.

Now, he says, virtually all the scrolls have been published, and new information that supports his thesis has come out.

He saw some vindication of his theory when, several years ago, the two Israeli archaeologists, Peleg and Itzhak Magen, gave it their support based on 10 years of excavations at Qumran. "They're not just any old archaeologists, they're very important ones and they're both with the Israel Antiquities Authority," the agency that administers the scrolls in Israel, he says.

Nevertheless, Golb says that his view "is still hotly contested by the traditional scholars. They don't want to be caught in a difficult position. It's human nature, I understand it, and distinguished scholars, at Harvard, Notre Dame, Oxford, Cambridge, went for Father de Vaux's theory lock, stock and barrel. They used that theory in their writings, taught their students that theory. Now the students of the students are still protecting their teachers."

The traditional scholars, Golb says, "are still trying to have a monopoly on it in terms of the exhibition of the scrolls. They can't have a monopoly over the texts themselves because they're all published, thanks to pressure by myself and other scholars. Now we turn to trying to convince the general public that the old theory is not the correct theory."

That, Golb says, is not easy. "All the exhibits take the hard-line position that the scrolls were only written by the sect that lived in Qumran. I think the public is being deprived of the other side of the story, which would give one more pride and understanding of a period in Jewish history. It's always 'the Essenes, the Essenes.' It's not 'the Jewish people.'"

Nowhere is that more true, Golb says, than in the series of scroll exhibitions that began in Charlotte, N.C. in the spring of 2006 and that, with some additions is now on display in San Diego.

The museum there bills the exhibit, which opened on June 29 and will continue for six months, as "the largest, most comprehensive exhibition of the Dead Sea Scrolls ever assembled (which) includes authentic Dead Sea Scrolls, ancient illuminated manuscripts, artifacts, landscape and aerial photography, and interactive displays about science, discovery, and exploration. ... Tracing the scrolls and their meaning through time, the exhibition connects the ancient world to the modern. The exhibition will span two floors and over 14,500 square feet."

With the collaboration of the Israel Antiquities Authority and the Department of Antiquities of Jordan, 27 scrolls, 10 exhibited for the first time ever, will be on display in San Diego. (For more information visit the museum's Web site, www.sdnhm.org)

Golb, in his "Fact and Fiction" article, writes that "Six decades after their discovery, the Dead Sea Scrolls are still being treated in many quarters as merely the writings of a small sect that once inhabited an austere desert location near the area where they were discovered. Nowhere is this effort being more ardently pursued than in the present series of Scroll exhibitions taking place here in the States."

The various exhibits, he writes, "have in common an effort to convince the public of the truth of the old theory .... The current exhibitions exclude from their presentations virtually all of the salient evidence pointing towards the Jerusalem origin of the Scrolls. In addition, the actual descriptions of the manuscripts are often slanted in ways that obscure the historical understanding of the texts."

Golb notes in the article that an exhibit plaque states that "the de Vaux evidence is accepted by the majority of scholars as identifying the Essenes with the manuscripts found in the caves." The claim, he says, is valid for those who supported de Vaux's theories in the early days of scroll research-scholars usually referred to as Qumranologists-but is not as true today.

"At the present time, an assertion such as the one made by the curators ... the clear purpose of which is to justify what can only be termed an entirely one-sided presentation, is obviously improper and out of place in public exhibitions of the Scrolls," he writes.

Golb also takes issue, as he does in his book, with the notion of the Essenes as being an ascetic, celibate sect. That theory was originally given credence by, among other evidence, the discovery of 16 pools at the site, 10 of which were once believed to be mikvaot or ritual baths. Such a discovery would bolster the view that the Essenes were fanatically concerned with the laws of ritual purity.

Golb says, however, that Magen and Peleg, the Israeli archaeologists, drew the conclusion that only one of the pools "may conceivably have served as a ritual bath," a conclusion bolstered by 10 years of excavation. He similarly dissects many more claims that accompany the artifacts in the exhibit.

"You won't see anything in the exhibits about, for example, the siege on Jerusalem," he says. "What I suggest in my book is that the hiding of the scrolls had a historic cause. The Jews in Jerusalem were about to be besieged by the Romans and they made preparations for the siege, and the preparations included hiding the temple artifacts, described as the treasures of the temple, and the precious scrolls. It makes sense. But the traditional scholars are fighting tooth and nail to prevent the public from seeing it that way."

A spokesperson for the San Diego Museum said, "In the exhibition, we've taken great care to acknowledge the fact that the body of knowledge surrounding the scrolls is ever-evolving. We do explain the most dominant opinion regarding the people at Qumran, but take care to explain other opinions as well."

So will it be strange for the Oriental Institute travelers to have as their guide to an exhibit a scholar who believes that much of the exhibit is wrongly presented? Sarah Sapperstein, the institute's membership coordinator, doesn't think so.

"This is a really controversial issue," she says. "People come from all different backgrounds and schools of thought on these topics, and we want to create an environment that encourages the conversation. That is as important as the trip itself."

Golb will give a presentation on his research before visitors view the scrolls exhibit, then will guide them through the exhibit. (A few openings remain for the trip, which takes place Oct. 19-21. For more information, call Sapperstein at 773-834-9777 or e-mail her at ssapperstein@uchicago.edu or oi-membership@uchicago.edu.)

As for Golb, who stresses that he is "a scholar of the history of the Jewish people" and not a Qumranologist, he has moved on to other areas of research, including a study of the Jews of Normandy in the Middle Ages, the subject of a 1998 book, and of a medieval yeshiva located in Rouen, France.

Yet he is also working on a second edition of "Who Wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls?" that he expects to come out in about two years.

"Over 10 years have passed (since the book was first published) and there have been new developments," he says. "Now many more of the texts are known. The new edition will give more translations of the texts. I hope it will be of some value to the public."

He declines to predict how the scrolls will be viewed in the future, saying that "I'm a historian, and historians should never predict the future." But, he adds, "I can only hope that the general intelligent reading public will come to understand that the old theory is dying or dead in terms of the logic, the actual material support for that theory."

And he quotes the second-century sage Rabbi Tarfon in words that he says apply as well to his own work: "It is not your obligation to complete the work (of perfecting the world), but you are not free to desist from it either."