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Dead Sea Scrolls Set for Posting Online

by Tim Stevens on August 28, 2008 at 12:32 PM

Dead Sea Scrolls Set for Posting Online
The Dead Sea Scrolls are among the most important finds of the twentieth century. Discovered in the 1940s, the badly deteriorated pieces of parchment that make up this 2,000-year-old edition of the Hebrew Bible have been carefully preserved, but continue to fade and fall apart with each handling. This has led to reluctance in granting scholars access for viewing and studying, but that's changing with an effort to digitally photograph all the scrolls and post them online for anyone to view.

The scrolls are on display at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, where the digital photography is taking place. The photographs will include images of what the scrolls look like today, as well as scans of older infrared photographs taken back in the 1950s. Naturally, you can't just run them through any 'ol scanner, so it's going to take another one to two years before the photographing is completed, and then some months or years after that before everything shows up online.

What happens after that is anyone's guess, but there's still considerable debate about the nature and intended order of the scrolls, and we're guessing there are plenty of folks online who can't wait to try to figure it all out for themselves. [Source: The New York Times]

Tags: bible, dead sea scrolls, DeadSeaScrolls, israel, religion

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