his well-fought campaign that in 1991 the unpublished scrolls were finally "liberated" (as he put it), and access granted to any scholar who wanted it. Vermes was invited to become an editor, and, together with myself, published the Cave 4 fragments of the Dead Sea Sect's rule-book, the so-called Community Rule.
Vermes helped build up Jewish studies as an academic discipline, acting as first president both of the British Association for Jewish Studies and of the European Association for Jewish Studies. He attracted a group of talented students to work with him, many of whom became scholars of distinction. Recognition followed thick and fast, including a fellowship of the British Academy, honorary doctorates from Edinburgh, Durham, Sheffield and the Central European University, Budapest, and a vote of congratulation by the US House of Representatives "for inspiring and educating the world".
When Pam died in 1993, he was devastated. But in 1995 he married Margaret, a younger friend, whom he and Pam had known for years. With Margaret came her son Ian from her former marriage. Vermes found himself, to his surprise and delight, playing in his 70s the role of paterfamilias. He was rejuvenated. His intellect and memory remained undimmed to the end, and only weeks before he died he was discussing a new book he planned to write.
"Professor Geza Vermes"
Professor Geza Vermes, who has died aged 88, was from 1965 to 1991 first Reader, then Professor, of Jewish Studies at Oxford and the foremost world authority on the Dead Sea Scrolls — early manuscripts of some Old Testament scriptures, the first of which were discovered accidentally in 1947 by a young Arab shepherd in a cave near the Dead Sea.
May 12th, 2013
Vermes led a long and sometimes bitter battle with the Israeli archaeological authorities to secure publication of all the manuscripts and fragments, copies of which were eventually lodged in the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies in 1992. His own The Dead Sea Scrolls in English, first published in 1962, had four editions, the latest in 1997, and sold 300,000 copies. He was the first to identify the Scrolls as belonging to the middle of the 2nd century BC.
That Vermes was able to achieve anything in this area and in other important fields of Jewish history and religion owed everything to the fact that during the darkest days of the Second World War he was, in his native Hungary, a Roman Catholic priest and, although of Jewish family background, just managed to escape deportation to a German death camp. Both his parents, who had converted to Catholicism in the 1930s, were less fortunate: he never saw them again after their arrest in 1944.
Vermes remained a priest until 1957, when marriage required his resignation and, having also renounced Catholicism, he returned to his roots and became a non-practising Jew. Eventually, however, he became a member of the Liberal Jewish Synagogue in London and a member of the academic committee of Leo Baeck College, though he declared himself to be uninterested in “organised religion of any description”.
Geza Vermes was born at Mako, southern Hungary, on June 22 1924. When he was four the family moved to Gyula, where his father was the owner and editor of the town’s weekly newspaper until it was closed down by anti-Jewish laws in 1938. Geza was sent to a Roman Catholic school where in 1942 he obtained top marks in every subject and qualified easily for university entry. He decided, however, that because of his Jewish origins he would never secure a university place, so he opted instead for the Catholic priesthood.
He was in the second year of a theological seminary when the Germans invaded Hungary and rounded up all Jews and those of Jewish origin.
Although not yet ordained, he was carrying out the functions of a deacon under the certification of the local bishop, enabling him to escape arrest. The remainder of the war was spent in hiding, protected by the Salesian and Dominican Orders in Budapest.
Although refused admission to the Dominican Order because of his Jewish background, Verme