2,000-year-old Dead Sea Scrolls go online

[undeterred]

JERUSALEM (AP) – Two thousand years after they were written and decades after they were found in desert caves, some of the world-famous Dead Sea Scrolls went online for the first time on Monday in a project launched by Israel's national museum and web giant Google.

The scrolls include the biblical Book of Isaiah, the manuscript known as the Temple Scroll, and three others. Surfers can search high-resolution images of the scrolls for specific passages, zoom in and out, and translate verses into English.

The originals are kept in a secured vault in a Jerusalem building constructed specifically to house the scrolls. Access requires at least three different keys, a magnetic card and a secret code. The five scrolls are among those purchased by Israeli researchers between 1947 and 1967 from antiquities dealers, having first been found by Bedouin shepherds in the Juddvean Desert.

The scrolls, considered by many to be the most significant archaeological find of the 20th century, are thought to have been written or collected by an ascetic Jewish sect that fled Jerusalem for the desert 2,000 years ago and settled at Qumran, on the banks of the Dead Sea. The hundreds of manuscripts that survived, partially or in full, in caves near the site, have shed light on the development of the Hebrew Bible and the origins of Christianity.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/story/2011-09-26/dead-sea-scroll/50554550/1?csp=34news

[gratuitous]

1. About frickin' time

The scrolls have been locked away from scholarly review for decades, partly out of misguided efforts to limit "damage" that might be done to scholarship that's gone before, partly out of professional jealousies, and partly out of political consideration. I look forward to free and widespread access to these ancient manuscripts and the fascinating findings yet to be made.

[undeterred]

3. I had a professor whose professor was in grad school

at Johns Hopkins the time these were discovered. We take them for granted now, but the people who were allowed to actually handle them and translate them were a very elite group and this truly was the find of the century in Ancient Near Eastern studies.

[MADem]

8. YES--What you said!! nt

[H2O Man]

21. Michael Baigent and

Richard Leigh's 1991 book "The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception" (Touchstone Books) documents how the church has conspired to suppress the information in them. It's definitely worth reading.

[Evasporque]

2. The scrolls say Jesus was gay and was a really nice guy...nt

[Skidmore]

4. Jeez, let it rest for a moment.

I'm not a particularly religious person but I can still take a moment to appreciate an artifact of history.

[Raster]

5. I believe it's called "sarcasm."

[dawg]

6. You know, I don't believe Jesus ever had sex.

He was supposed to be sinless, and since he was apparently never married, sex would have been a sin.

And the point of the whole thing was that he resisted all temptations and led a pure life. Whether he was tempted by women or whether he was tempted by men would be irrelevant, because he resisted the temptation either way.

But if it turned out that he had been born attracted to men, wouldn't that make lots of heads explode?

[MADem]

10. Some people think he was married.

And those women at the foot of the cross? His mother....and his WIFE.

I mean, really, who hangs around with a whore all the live long day? Wouldn't she have to make some money?

[dawg]

12. That would blow lots of people's minds too.

An interesting thing I once read, is that there is no evidence anywhere to indicate that Mary Magdalene was ever a prostitute. Some of the folks who think she was married to Jesus consider the prostitute thing to be a slander used against her by others in the early church who were jealous of her special station.

[MADem]

18. And really--the Virgin Mary is some kinda saint, but people have always been known

by the company they keep. She's hanging around at the foot of the cross w/some putana? I don't believe it. I think she was with her daughter-in-law.

I wonder if those scrolls may give us a bit of info on that topic!

[H2O Man]

20. There are references

in the gospels where his opposition in the temple use a term exclusive to a married man, when speaking to Jesus.

[MADem]

9. I thought they said he was married to that nice gal they later called a whore

and had a few kiddies that he blessed along with the beasts!

[undeterred]

13. FWIW I don't think he's mentioned in the DSS.

[Dover]

7. I wonder why the article didn't provide a link to the DSC viewing website?..n/t

[MADem]

11. Not easy to find, but here it is

http://dss.collections.imj.org.il/

They aren't done yet, apparently.

[undeterred]

14. Thank you very much.

I did two semesters of ancient Hebrew many moons ago... lets see if I can pick anything out.

[MADem]

16. If you find anything understandable, do cut out a pic and tell! NT

[Dover]

15. Thank you for digging that up! I couldn't find it... n/t

[MADem]

17. I actually had to do a little clicking! Hee hee--most heavy lifting I did today, pretty much.

Enjoying a lazy day...!

[Heywood J]

19. Will we now learn whether her gates are really gates of death? (NT)