Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Amazing Archeological Discovery Dating Back To 68 A.D. Now Online



THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS---the oldest known Biblical manuscripts in the world accidently discovered in desert caves in Israel in the 1940s by Beduoins---are officially online through Google technology. Google writes in its amazing announcement:

It’s taken 24 centuries, the work of archaeologists, scholars and historians, and the advent of the Internet to make the Dead Sea Scrolls accessible to anyone in the world. Today, as the new year approaches on the Hebrew calendar, we’re celebrating the launch of the Dead Sea Scrolls online; a project of The Israel Museum, Jerusalem powered by Google technology.

Written between the third and first centuries BCE, the Dead Sea Scrolls include the oldest known biblical manuscripts in existence. In 68 BCE, they were hidden in 11 caves in the Judean desert on the shores of the Dead Sea to protect them from the approaching Roman armies. They weren’t discovered again until 1947, when a Bedouin shepherd threw a rock in a cave and realized something was inside. Since 1965, the scrolls have been on exhibit at the Shrine of the Book at The Israel Museum, Jerusalem. Among other topics, the scrolls offer critical insights into life and religion in ancient Jerusalem, including the birth of Christianity.

Now, anyone around the world can view, read and interact with five digitized Dead Sea Scrolls. The high resolution photographs, taken by Ardon Bar-Hama, are up to 1,200 megapixels, almost 200 times more than the average consumer camera, so viewers can see even the most minute details in the parchment. For example, zoom in on the Temple Scroll to get a feel for the animal skin it's written on—only one-tenth of a millimeter thick.


It's an amazing feat that these scrolls have gone from being hidden in caves in the Israeli desert for thousands of years to now being accessible to the entire world via online access some sixty years after their discovery!

1 comment:

Webutante said...

William,

As much as you'd like to use this post as a jumping off point to disprove the Gospel and writings of the Apostle Paul, I don't have time nor the energy for this.

I will only say that Paul did indeed meet the risen supernatural Christ on the road to Damascus---'Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?'

All who follow Christ know that to meet him and begin to understand the OT and NT is a supernatural, as in not natural, experience, presided over by the Holy Spirit.

Paul's blinding experience and subsequent period of blindness, was enough to change him from a persecutor and murderer of followers of Christ, to a follower who spread the Good News to all the known world and finally was beheaded in Rome for his belief.

He was just as much a scoffer---if not moreso---of Christ as you are.