In what is a very exciting project the Israel Museum and
Google have collaborated together to create a digital copy of the Dead Sea Scrolls. So far they have digitized five scrolls. Overall the Dead Sea Scrolls
include some of the oldest copies and fragments of the Hebrew Bible, which
Christians call the Old Testament. My Hebrew is not quite strong enough for me
to recognize much of characters used in the Isaiah Scroll (the Temple Scroll
text is easier to recognize) but it is very interesting to see these scrolls in
such detail.
The first video is a quick introduction to the project and
the second video is a lecture by Dr. Weston Fields on the Dead Sea Scrolls. The
Dr. Fields video is a very interesting lecture on the history and importance of
the Scrolls. He discusses the importance of the scrolls at around the 19 minute
mark to about the 27 minute mark of the lecture. The one sentence summary is
that the Scrolls show how well the process of transmitting the scriptures was
handled. It means that the Jewish people were able to transmit their texts very
well and this is important in that it gives us the confidence that our
Scriptures are reliable in terms of literary accuracy.
From the Israel Museum in Jerusalem:
The Dr. Weston Fields Lecture:
Further Reading:
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