I have covered much of the news surrounding Hanan Eshel’s recovery of some scroll fragments of the book of Leviticus (see here) as well as the subsequent investigation into his involvement the purchase (see here and here).

I wanted to clarify that no charges were ever laid against Hanan Eshel, although some news reports suggested otherwise. The reason why Hanan was not able to make it to SBL had nothing to do with the controversy. Hanan had his passport back and a visa was arranged for SBL, though there were some irregularities with his passport and he was advised against traveling.