Dead Sea Scrolls to Cyberspace

I don't know if any of you would find this interesting but I thought I'd share this information with you. If you have not heard of the Dead Sea Scrolls, it is a series of documents discovered between 1947 and 1979 in eleven caves in and around the Wadi Qumran on the west bank of the Dead Sea. These scrolls are of great religious and historical significance, as they include practically the only known surviving copies of Biblical documents made before 100 AD. Publication of the scrolls has taken many decades, and the delay has been a source of academic controversy. As of 2007 two volumes remain to be completed with the whole series (Discoveries in the Judean Desert) running to thirty nine volumes in total. Many of the scrolls are now housed in the Shrine of the Book in Jerusalem.

On Wednesday the 27^th of August 2008, The Guardian, UK reported that scientists and scholars in Jerusalem have begun a programme to take the first high-resolution, digital photographs of the Dead Sea Scrolls so they can be made available to the public on the internet. Now begins the task of photographing some 15 to 20 thousand fragments to make up 900 scrolls. The project is estimated to take up to 5 years and millions of dollars starting with coloured photography, then infra-red and finally a sophisticated multi-spectral imaging camera, that will distinguish the ink from the parchment and papyrus on which the scrolls were written. The imaging spectroscopy, a borrowed technology used by NASA, will for the first time allow the condition of the scrolls to be properly monitored in a non-invasive way to aid conservation by detecting any changes in the scrolls before they become visible to the curators. Pnina Shor, the head of the Artefacts Treatment and Conservation Department, Israel Antiquities Authority said, “The aim in the end is that you can go online and call up the scrolls with the best possible resolution and all the information that exists about them today. We want to provide opportunities for future research on the scrolls. We feel it's part of our duty to expose them to the world as a whole.”

The significance of the scrolls relates in a large part to the field of textual criticism of Christian Theology. Before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the oldest Hebrew manuscripts of the Bible were Masoretic texts dating to 9th century. The biblical manuscripts found among the Dead Sea Scrolls push that date back to the 2nd century BC. Before this discovery, the earliest extant manuscripts of the Old Testament were in Greek in manuscripts such as Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus. Although a few of the biblical manuscripts found at Qumran differ significantly from the Masoretic text, most do not. The scrolls thus provide new variants and the ability to be more confident of those readings where the Dead Sea manuscripts agree with the Masoretic Text or with the early Greek manuscripts. Further, the sectarian texts among the Dead Sea Scrolls, most of which were previously unknown, offer new light on one form of Judaism practiced during the Second Temple period. Because they are frequently described as important to the history of the Bible, the scrolls are surrounded by a wide range of conspiracy theories. There is also writing about the Nephilim related to the Book of Enoch.

See additional links for more information or contact me for a translated copy of the Book of Enoch.