Today is the great
day for all the history lovers and those who are interesting in Judaism, Christianity,
Islam, and multiple congregations and sects, basing their religious beliefs on
the concepts of Monotheism. In a joint effort by Israel's national museum and
Google, the 2,000-year-old Dead Sea scrolls, previously only available to a
small group of scholars, have been made available online.
Five of the most
important Dead Sea Scrolls will now be available to the digital public: the
biblical Book of Isaiah, the manuscript known as the Temple Scroll, and three
others. Visitors are also able to search the ancient texts at the Digital Dead Sea
Scrolls website.
The scrolls offer
critical insight into customs and religion of ancient Israelis, including
information on the birth of Christianity. The sacred texts include the oldest written
record of the Old Testament ever found.
The Scrolls are for
the 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 two
centuries B.C. and of the first two centuries A.D. The discovery of the Scrolls
has greatly enhanced our knowledge of these two languages. In addition, there
are a few texts written in Greek. The scrolls are most commonly made of animal
skins, but also papyrus and one of copper. They are written with a carbon-based
ink, from right to left, using no punctuation except for an occasional
paragraph indentation. In fact, in some cases, there are not even spaces
between the words.
Written between the
third and first centuries BCE, the Dead Sea Scrolls include the oldest known
biblical manuscripts in existence, according to Google's press release. They
were 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 scrolls
from approaching Roman armies.
"This
partnership with The Israel Museum, Jerusalem is part of our larger effort to
bring important cultural and historical collections online," Google's
spokesperson wrote in the press release. "We are thrilled to have been
able to help this project through hosting on Google Storage and App Engine,
helping design the web experience and making it searchable and accessible to
the world."
How they were found?
In the spring of
1947 Bedouin goat-herds, searching the cliffs along the Dead Sea for a lost
goat (or for treasure, depending on who is telling the story), came upon a cave
containing jars filled with manuscripts. That find caused a sensation when it
was released to the world, and continues to fascinate the scholarly community
and the public to this day.
The first
discoveries came to the attention of scholars in 1948, when seven of the
scrolls were sold by the Bedouin to a cobbler and antiquities dealer called
Kando. He in turn sold three of the scrolls to Eleazar L. Sukenik of Hebrew
University, and four to Metropolitan Mar Athanasius Yeshue Samuel of the Syrian
Orthodox monastery of St. Mark. Mar Athanasius in turn brought his four to the
American School of Oriental Research, where they came to the attention of American
and European scholars.
It was not until
1949 that the site of the find was identified as the cave now known as Qumran
Cave 1. It was that identification that led to further explorations and
excavations of the area of Khirbet Qumran. Further search of Cave 1 revealed
archaeological finds of pottery, cloth and wood, as well as a number of
additional manuscript fragments. It was these discoveries that proved
decisively that the scrolls were indeed ancient and authentic.
Between 1949 and
1956, in what became a race between the Bedouin and the archaeologists, ten
additional caves were found in the hills around Qumran, caves that yielded
several more scrolls, as well as thousands of fragments of scrolls: the
remnants of more than 15,000 Dead Sea Scrolls, written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and
Greek between 150 BC and 70 AD. They are between 800-1,000 years older than
previously known manuscripts.
Importance
The scrolls include
the oldest known biblical manuscripts in existence, religious manuscripts not
included in the Bible and documents that describe daily Jewish life in the land
of Israel during the time of the Second Temple Period, and the birth of
Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism.
The manuscripts span
a 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. to
quash a rebellion. All that remains of the temple today is the Western
Wall.
Major Discoveries
We will just mention
12 amazing facts that make this amazing discovery a breakthrough point for
historians 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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