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Józef Tadeusz Milik (Seroczyn, Poland, March 24, 1922 – Paris, January 6, 2006) was a Polish biblical scholar and a former Catholic priest. He was fluent in Polish, Russian, Italian, French, German, and English plus many ancient languages Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Aramaic, Syriac, Old Church Slavonic, Arabic, Georgian, Ugaritic, Akkadian, Sumerian, Egyptian, and Hittite. Milik published more texts of the Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS) than any other original team member; nevertheless, since he did not complete all the work on his portion, he is assigned a major share of the blame for the Scrolls not being published for almost forty years.
Milestones
- 1944 Entered Catholic University of Lublin to study Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Aramaic, Syriac, & Old Church Slavonic
- 1946 Ordained as a Catholic priest in Warsaw
- Late-1940s Attended Pontifical Oriental Institute and Pontifical Biblical Institute to study Arabic, Georgian, Ugaritic, Akkadian, Sumerian, Egyptian, and Hittite
- 1950 Gained a licentiate summa cum laude
- 1951 Began working in Jerusalem to decipher DSS; devised a system of designating the fragments
- 1955 Co-edited first major DSS publication for Cave 1 texts: "Discoveries in the Judaean Desert"
- 1956 Heralded by Time magazine as "the fastest man with a fragment"
- 1959 Published "Ten Years of Discovery in the Wilderness of Judaea" describing the DSS discovery (revision and translation of the 1957 book "Dix ans de découvertes dans le Désert de Juda")
- 1969 Left priesthood, married, and moved to Paris
- 1976 Published "The Books of Enoch"
After moving to Paris, Milik worked as a researcher for the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique until his retirement in 1987.
References
- The Independent's obituary
- Shanks, Hershel (2006). "Milestones: Jozef Milik (1922-2006)". Biblical Archaeology Review. 32:3 (May/June): 18.