CINCINNATI – The Ten Commandments scroll – one of the most important of the Dead Sea Scrolls in existence – is going on display in Cincinnati beginning Friday.
The tightly guarded scroll, one of the approximately 900 Dead Sea Scrolls in existence, can be seen through April 14 at the Cincinnati Museum Center.
The Ten Commandments scroll will be added for the last 17 days of the exhibit “Dead Sea Scrolls: Life and Faith in Ancient Times,” which also features 10 other scroll fragments from Israel. The scrolls are of great historical and religious significance because they include the earliest known surviving manuscripts of text included in the Hebrew Bible.
The Ten Commandments scroll is one of only two ancient manuscripts to feature the commandments, the foundation of Jewish and Christian religions. Read more.
The Dead Sea Scrolls, arguably the greatest archaeological discovery of the 20th century, have now been placed online for anyone to freely view them in unprecedented high resolution detail.
Launched the middle of December, 2012, the Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library is the brainchild of a collaboration between the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) and the Google Research and Development Center in Israel. The objective is to eventually place the entire collection of about 930 manuscripts, comprised of thousands of Dead Sea Scroll fragments and representing the complete known archive of the world-reknowned ancient documents. Already, hundreds of images have been placed online for view and study by anyone interested.
To view Dead Sea Scroll fragments that have already been placed online using the new technology, go to the Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library. Read more.
Israeli paleographer Ada Yardeni has recently identified 50 Dead Sea scrolls found near Qumran in Israel as having been penned by the same scribe, a scribe who also penned scrolls that have been found at the Herodian mountain-top fortress of Masada, where Jewish rebel zealots made their last suicidal stand against the Romans in 73 A.D.
The subject scrolls were previously discovered in six different caves in the area of the Qumran site. In an article authored by Sidnie White Crawford and published in the November/December 2012 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review, Crawford writes that documents penned by the same scribe and found in multiple caves implies that “the scribe was a member of that sect who also copied Jewish scriptural scrolls, countering the idea that the Qumran collection was a non-sectarian ‘general Jewish’ library.” Read more.
The celebrated Dead Sea Scrolls, first discovered in 1948 in the caves adjacent to the ancient site of Khirbet Qumran near the Dead Sea, are known to represent the earliest known texts of almost every book of the Hebrew Bible, except for two — the Book of Esther and the Book of Nehemiah. Now, a Norwegian Dead Sea Scroll scholar has announced his discovery of a fragment of Nehemiah.
Working together with Esther Eshel of Bar-Ilan University, Torleif Elgvin of Evangelical Lutheran University College in Oslo, Norway, has been examining previously unknown fragments from 29 scrolls (including scraps of four others). The fragments include that of Nehemiah for the first time, textual variations of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy, 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel, Ruth, Proverbs, and the Twelve; a fragment from an unknown Enoch-related text and two new copies of 1 Enoch; and a new copy of a sectarian biblical commentary. Read more.
PHILADELPHIA — Ancient Israel was always at the epicenter of political, religious and moral change from the biblical period of Kings David and Solomon to Second Temple times when the Greeks and Romans ruled the land and the birth of Jesus was at hand. These turbulent and transformative times shaped western culture and gave rise to Judaism, Christianity and eventually, Islam.
On May 12, The Franklin Institute in Philadelphia opens Dead Sea Scrolls: Life and Faith in Ancient Times, a new exhibition that explores that rich history with the largest collection of artifacts from biblical to Islamic periods ever to tour outside of Israel. Running through Oct. 14, the exhibition features more than 600 objects, including a 3-ton stone from Jerusalem’s Western Wall and 20 extremely rare fragments from the Dead Sea Scrolls collection. They will be displayed in two sets of 10 for approximately three months each. Read more.
Discovery Times Square – the crowd-pleasing exhibition space on West 44th Street that is now the host to “The Dead Sea Scrolls: Life and Faith in Biblical Times” – announced that it planned to briefly add a new scroll to the show, one of the oldest and best-preserved manuscripts of the Ten Commandments.
The show, which opened Oct. 28 and will continue through April 15, brings together hundreds of artifacts drawn from archaeological explorations by the Israel Antiquities Authority and from the historic discovery of the scrolls in 1947 by Bedouins in caves near the Dead Sea. The Ten Commandments scroll – which dates from 30 B.C. to 1 B.C. and was discovered in 1952 – will be added to the show from Dec. 16 through Jan. 2. Like many of those on display, the scroll is extremely sensitive to light and humidity and can be shown for only a limited amount of time. Read more.
The Dead Sea Scrolls may have been written, at least in part, by a sectarian group called the Essenes, according to nearly 200 textiles discovered in caves at Qumran, in the West Bank, where the religious texts had been stored.
Scholars are divided about who authored the Dead Sea Scrolls and how the texts got to Qumran, and so the new finding could help clear up this long-standing mystery.
The research reveals that all the textiles were made of linen, rather than wool, which was the preferred textile used in ancient Israel. Also they lack decoration, some actually being bleached white, even though fabrics from the period often have vivid colours. Altogether, researchers say these finds suggest that the Essenes, an ancient Jewish sect, “penned” some of the scrolls. Read more.
A three-ton stone from Jerusalem’s Western Wall, hundreds of biblical era artifacts, and a collection of 20 Dead Sea Scrolls will make their debut tomorrow in New York’s Discovery Times Square Exposition.
The largest collection of biblical artifacts ever displayed outside Israel, the exhibition “Dead Sea Scrolls: Life and Faith in Biblical Times,” aims to take visitors on a “fascinating archaeological journey through the Holy Land.”
The show’s centerpiece is 20 Dead Sea Scrolls, containing sections from the biblical books of Genesis, Psalms, Exodus, Isaiah, and others. The scrolls include four pieces which have never been available for public viewing.
Considered one of the greatest archeological discoveries of the 20th century, the parchment and papyrus scrolls were discovered between 1947 and 1956 in 11 caves around the ruins of the ancient settlement of Qumran on the Dead Sea. Read more.
