Today is the greatday for all the history lovers and those who are interesting in Judaism, Christianity,Islam, and multiple congregations and sects, basing their religious beliefs onthe concepts of Monotheism. In a joint effort by Israel's national museum andGoogle, the 2,000-year-old Dead Sea scrolls, previously only available to asmall group of scholars, have been made available online.
Five of the mostimportant Dead Sea Scrolls will now be available to the digital public: thebiblical Book of Isaiah, the manuscript known as the Temple Scroll, and threeothers. Visitors are also able to search the ancient texts at the Digital Dead SeaScrolls website.
The scrolls offercritical insight into customs and religion of ancient Israelis, includinginformation on the birth of Christianity. The sacred texts include the oldest writtenrecord of the Old Testament ever found.
The Scrolls are forthe most part, written in Hebrew, but there are many written in Aramaic.Aramaic was the common language of the Jews of Palestine for the last twocenturies B.C. and of the first two centuries A.D. The discovery of the Scrollshas greatly enhanced our knowledge of these two languages. In addition, thereare a few texts written in Greek. The scrolls are most commonly made of animalskins, but also papyrus and one of copper. They are written with a carbon-basedink, from right to left, using no punctuation except for an occasionalparagraph indentation. In fact, in some cases, there are not even spacesbetween the words.
Written between thethird and first centuries BCE, the Dead Sea Scrolls include the oldest knownbiblical manuscripts in existence, according to Google's press release. Theywere hidden in 11 caves in the Judean desert on the shores of the Dead Sea,around 68 BCE. The owners of the texts apparently wanted to protect the scrollsfrom approaching Roman armies.
"Thispartnership with The Israel Museum, Jerusalem is part of our larger effort tobring important cultural and historical collections online," Google'sspokesperson wrote in the press release. "We are thrilled to have beenable to help this project through hosting on Google Storage and App Engine,helping design the web experience and making it searchable and accessible tothe world."
How they were found?
In the spring of1947 Bedouin goat-herds, searching the cliffs along the Dead Sea for a lostgoat (or for treasure, depending on who is telling the story), came upon a cavecontaining jars filled with manuscripts. That find caused a sensation when itwas released to the world, and continues to fascinate the scholarly communityand the public to this day.
The firstdiscoveries came to the attention of scholars in 1948, when seven of thescrolls were sold by the Bedouin to a cobbler and antiquities dealer calledKando. He in turn sold three of the scrolls to Eleazar L. Sukenik of HebrewUniversity, and four to Metropolitan Mar Athanasius Yeshue Samuel of the SyrianOrthodox monastery of St. Mark. Mar Athanasius in turn brought his four to theAmerican School of Oriental Research, where they came to the attention of Americanand European scholars.
It was not until1949 that the site of the find was identified as the cave now known as QumranCave 1. It was that identification that led to further explorations andexcavations of the area of Khirbet Qumran. Further search of Cave 1 revealedarchaeological finds of pottery, cloth and wood, as well as a number ofadditional manuscript fragments. It was these discoveries that proveddecisively that the scrolls were indeed ancient and authentic.
Between 1949 and1956, in what became a race between the Bedouin and the archaeologists, tenadditional caves were found in the hills around Qumran, caves that yieldedseveral more scrolls, as well as thousands of fragments of scrolls: theremnants of more than 15,000 Dead Sea Scrolls, written in Hebrew, Aramaic, andGreek between 150 BC and 70 AD. They are between 800-1,000 years older thanpreviously known manuscripts.
Importance
The scrolls includethe oldest known biblical manuscripts in existence, religious manuscripts notincluded in the Bible and documents that describe daily Jewish life in the landof Israel during the time of the Second Temple Period, and the birth ofChristianity and Rabbinic Judaism.
The manuscripts spana time when the Holy Land was under Greek rule and then the Roman,whose soldiers destroyed the Jews' Second Temple in Jerusalem in 70 A.D. toquash a rebellion. All that remains of the temple today is the WesternWall.
Major Discoveries
We will just mention12 amazing facts that make this amazing discovery a breakthrough point forhistorians and religious scholars:
- The Scrolls can be divided into two categories�biblical and non-biblical. Fragments of every book of the Hebrew canon (Old Testament) have been discovered except for the book of Esther.
- There are now identified among the scrolls, 19 copies of the Book of Isaiah, 25 copies of Deuteronomy and 30 copies of the Psalms.
- Prophecies by Ezekiel, Jeremiah and Daniel not found in the Bible are written in the Scrolls.
- The Isaiah Scroll, found relatively intact, is 1000 years older than any previously known copy of Isaiah. In fact, the scrolls are the oldest group of Old Testament manuscripts ever found.
- In the Scrolls are found never before seen psalms attributed to King David and Joshua.
- There are non-biblical writings along the order of commentaries on the OT, paraphrases that expand on the Law, rule books of the community, war conduct, thanksgiving psalms, hymnic compositions, benedictions, liturgical texts, and sapiential (wisdom) writings.
- The Scrolls appear to be the library of a Jewish sect - Essenes. The library was hidden away in caves around the outbreak of the First Jewish Revolt (A.D. 66-70) as the Roman army advanced against the rebel Jews. The Essenes are mentioned by Josephus and in a few other sources, but not in the New Testament. The Essenes were a strict Torah observant, Messianic, apocalyptic, baptist, wilderness, new covenant Jewish sect. They were led by a priest they called the "Teacher of Righteousness," who was opposed and possibly killed by the establishment priesthood in Jerusalem. The enemies of the Qumran community were called the "Sons of Darkness"; they called themselves the "Sons of Light," "the poor," and members of "the Way." They thought of themselves as "the holy ones," who lived in "the house of holiness," because "the Holy Spirit" dwelt with them.
- The last words of Joseph, Judah, Levi, Naphtali, and Amram (the father of Moses) are written down in the Scrolls.
- One of the most curious scrolls is the Copper Scroll. Discovered in Cave 3, this scroll records a list of 64 underground hiding places throughout the land of Israel. The deposits are to contain certain amounts of gold, silver, aromatics, and manuscripts. These are believed to be treasures from the Temple at Jerusalem, that were hidden away for safekeeping.
- The scrolls contain previously unknown stories about biblical figures such as Enoch, Abraham, and Noah. The story of Abraham includes an explanation why God asked Abraham to sacrifice his only son Isaac.
- The Scrolls have revolutionized textual criticism of the Old Testament. Interestingly, now with manuscripts predating the medieval period, we find these texts in substantial agreement with the Masoretic text as well as widely variant forms.
- The Dead Sea Scrolls enhance our knowledge of both Judaism and Christianity. They represent a non-rabbinic form of Judaism and provide a wealth of comparative material for New Testament scholars, including many important parallels to the Jesus movement. They show Christianity to be rooted in Judaism and have been called the evolutionary link between the two.
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