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Google Brings the Dead Sea Scrolls To the Digital Age
skade88 writes "Google has been working to bring many old manuscripts to the internet at high resolution for all to see. From their announcement: 'A little over a year ago, we helped put online five manuscripts of the Dead Sea Scrolls—ancient documents that include the oldest known biblical manuscripts in existence. Written more than 2,000 years ago on pieces of parchment and papyrus, they were preserved by the hot, dry desert climate and the darkness of the caves in which they were hidden. The Scrolls are possibly the most important archaeological discovery of the 20th century. Today, we're helping put more of these ancient treasures online. The Israel Antiquities Authority is launching the Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library, an online collection of some 5,000 images of scroll fragments, at a quality never seen before.'"
Hard to believe, but many, many people still believe the stories told in these documents are the literal word of God, rather than things that our Bronze Age ancestors cooked up to explain things they didn't understand and keep the population in line. Hopefully, at some future point, we will evolve beyond such fables and things like this will be an archeological curiosity, and nothing more.
I've been typing recaptchas every day like a maniac for years. Where are they offering these works I helped digitize?
Rather than reading fables, I would prefer to see some of the manuscripts from Leonardo Da Vinci. Now, that would be something interesting and worth spending my time with!
I can't find the percentage of identified vs. unidentified, but among the identified scrolls:
40% are copies of text from the Hebrew Bible
30% are copies of texts not canonized in the Hebrew Bible (i.e. fanfiction) from the Second Temple Period like the Books of Enoch, Jubilees, Tobit, Sirach, and additional psalms
30% are "sectarian manuscripts" - texts that describe rules or a set of beliefs held by certain groups within Judaism.
The Scrolls are possibly the most important archaeological discovery of the 20th century.
Atlantis was discovered hundreds of times during the 20th Century. Surely that adds up to more than a single discovery of some scrolls.
On a serious note, I'm skeptical of the claim anyway. We discovered entire civilizations we never previously knew existed, and a great number of unknown texts, entire unknown languages and writing systems, etc.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
"...at a quality never seen before.'"
With the exception of when I saw them at the Royal Ontario Museum.
At a quality never seen before *online* maybe
I say don't drink and drive, you might spill your drink. Before you get behind the wheel just stop and think.
Christians are mushrooms covered in god's jizz? Interesting, that explains a lot. Thanks John Marco Allegro, it's all starting to make sense now. If I were a mushroom covered in omnipotent spunk I too would want everyone else to join in on the festivities. Silly humans.
Given the scrolls were hoarded by religious zealots for decades, I assume that any interesting scrolls (that say, for example, that Mary had a husband) have been hidden safely away from the public by now.
If it does not liberalize the "Who is a Jew" definition under the Law of Return, why bother.
It might be worth at least skimming a translation of the scrolls before forming a strong opinion about their content and value.
Yeah I know what site this is, and I'm not new here.
Something I think is worth keeping in mind....Just as there is ignorance now that rivals ancient ignorance, there was also intelligence in ancient times that rivals the best the modern world has to offer. Though its true that religious writings are largely fiction, a lot of very intelligent people worked on them, and there is significant understanding mixed in unevenly with the nonsense.
Modern academics are very good at understanding subjects where the same observations consistently yield the same statistical distribution of results. They're even better at studying things that can be perturbed in a controlled way, and dynamics that can be modeled well mathematically. They're generally very bad at understanding anything else. Many go so far as to assert that if a phenomena can't be modeled in a predictive way then for practical purposes it doesn't even exist. In this manner they ignore everything they're not good at solving. In my experience some ancient scriptures describe discoverably real aspects of life that modern experts are mostly ignorant of.
I didn't find much of interest in the Dead Sea Scrolls, but a lot of that is just me personally, it doesn't mean there's nothing there for anyone. Other old writings such as in the Nag Hammadi discovery have a lot of interesting content though, notwithstanding that they're not trustworthy as standards of truth. And I don't mean interesting from a historical perspective, I mean there is insight there that can not be found elsewhere.
...whether you know it or not.
Jesus said to his disciples, "Compare me to someone and tell me whom I am like."
Simon Peter said to him, "You are like a righteous angel."
Matthew said to him, "You are like a wise philosopher."
Thomas said to him, "Master, my mouth is wholly incapable of saying whom you are like."
Jesus said, "I am not your master. Because you have drunk, you have become intoxicated from the bubbling spring which I have measured out."
And he took him and withdrew and told him three things. When Thomas returned to his companions, they asked him, "What did Jesus say to you?"
Thomas said to them, "If I tell you (even) one of the things which he told me, you will pick up stones and throw them at me; a fire will come out of the stones and burn you up."
--Thomas
We know you better than you think.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
So it DOES say "blessed are the cheesemakers".
I thought so.
Does this mean we can stop Catholicism from spreading lies and untruths with their edited version of the Bible which makes an idol/demi-god out of a certain anarchist that lived 2k years ago?
All religions are clearly instigated by Loki - Father of Lies, Sower of Strife.
He delights in telling different lies to different groups to trick them info fighting.
Just one look at the world proves Loki is real.
Macaroni pictures.
The whole idea is that you learn the language so you can understand the subtleties of it yourself. Many things get lost in translation and interpretation, so you would gain by learning the language.
If you wouldn't do that, you could just as well buy any modern bible and state "it's exactly the same". Given the enormous amount of religions based on stories in these scrolls, they are relevant to a large amount of people. Remember that these religions differ and have gone to war about the interpretation of the stories in these scrolls for the last two thousand years or so. Stating that you don't need to learn the original language because "everything has been translated and annotated" is, in my opinion, the worst advice you could give to someone regarding these scrolls. Their discovery and the discussion about their translation has been one of the most controversial "scientific" discussions in the last few decades of several related religions, Christianity and more precise, Catholicism.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
TV preachers and preachers in many churches, many religions, state the bible to be "the word of god". Since those people tend to be the official delegates of their respective religion, I'd say quite a lot of religions actually *do* advertise "the sacred book" (is bible a taboo word??) as the literal word of God.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
"Transcribed word for word" is what the book claims it is. There are many fantasy novels that also claim to be the literal diary or words of a (fictitious) person. Robinson Crusoe comes to mind, as an example. There is no original manuscript written in verified samples of Muhammad's hand writing to directly link the contents of the book to at least his writing, be it original or a copy of previous work by someone else.
The statement that "it was later compiled and the script standardized" implies redacting by the person/people doing that very work. It may very well be that 95% of it is actually rather literal transcript of what Muhammad dictated, but we don't know which parts may, or may not be and more important, which parts have been left out. He may very well have dictated other texts that should have been part of the Q'ran in his mind, that never made it into the "final transcript".
This may sound rather heretic to any modern Muslim, but take one look at how newspapers, magazines, and books are made. Ask anyone that has been interviewed by a reporter or that dictated stories for their (auto)biography to a (ghost)writer. You can tell a story one way, but it gets published totally different, usually. That is a well known fact and it happens while people are still alive. Stories about them and what they said after they died, usually tend to be way more moral and way less literal, unless there's a funny anecdote or some "hand picked quotes" that can be used to prove a point. Things that other people write down, tend to be their interpretation of what you say, especially if you can't verify that they wrote it down correctly. If those things also get redacted, they tend to be the interpretation of what the redaction wants to get out into the world of the interpretation of someone that may or may not have written down what you have said, but probably not what you have meant to get across.
Before someone gets angry and declares a Fatwa on me (what would Jesus do?), this is my personal opinion and interpretation. I wasn't there when Muhammad dictated the Q'ran or when it was redacted after his death. It may just happen to be the full, true and literal words he wanted to be in there. I just happen to think it's not very likely that it is. Regardless of that, you should judge the book on it's contents, not on who allegedly wrote it. For the last few thousand years, that seemed to have worked just fine for Islam, so why bother with someone that questions it's author, but not it's contents?
No, I did not read the Q'ran, so no, I'm not judging it's contents. I don't think that would be fair, although it would fit the SlashDot tradition just fine. ;)
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
A lot of comments here are dismissing the entire idea of God but they don't seem to have really wrapped their head around 'God.' Generally, God, as known in the old and new testament, is a being...a force...a 'father' who transcends the world and the entire universe and has existed forever and will always exist. God created everything that we see including all of the laws and relationships that define our understanding of 'science.' It is the 'actions' of God that define our understanding of him in the old testament. This is the God who delivered miraculous military victories in the face of overwhelming enemies, who caused bushes to burn but not be consumed, who delivered plagues and pestilence upon enemies, who parted the sea allowing escape, and who fed a people wandering in the desert, gave them a code to live by, and provided a new land for them to live in. We can dismiss all of these events as 'fables', secure in our scientific understanding that tells us such things are 'impossible' but we cannot deny that these events were very real to people who claimed to have experienced them. Similarly, there was a man who lived in what is now Israel approximately 2,000 years ago and performed a variety of miraculous actions before returning to life following a cruel execution. We cannot deny that the events that occurred 2,000 years ago were so amazing to the people who experienced them that their lives were transformed forever and they began living according to a new 'code' that has persisted to the present and is, coincidentally, the basis for most of our current civilization and law. Finally, we cannot deny that a significant portion of the entire population of the world believes in the principles taught by that man and follows them in their daily lives. So those dusty scrolls from 2200 to 1900 years ago, found in those old caves, represent documents produced during a time of religious ferment and upheaval. We are no different than those people were. If there were a religious figure today who was giving sight to the blind, curing uncurable diseases, causing paraplegics to give up their wheelchairs, changing water into wine, multiplying food at the local Safeway by 1000x, teaching us to love others, and then returning to life to walk among us after being beheaded by evildoers, we would be just as impressed as those people were then. Of course, those who were not actually present would be just a little skeptical and their descendants even more so...but, with the power of God, they would recognize the truth for what it was...and so do we.
I also have a Master's degree in New Testament and Early Christianity from Harvard where I spent a lot of time studying them as well. I thought I would just repost what I did last year when slashdot ran an almost identical story. The questions that seem to arise when something like this is posted are perennial so I hope this answers some of yours or clarifies some things, and, as before, feel free to ask any questions you might have and I'll do my best to give a scholarly answer:
It's taken this long to publish partly for bureaucratic reasons, but mostly because there are thousands of fragments that are basically shredded wheat that had to be put back together, reconstructed, translated, categorized, edited, and published. This was also around the time the State of Israel was formed, and the cluster**** that was caused a lot of delays and red tape.They have not been kept secret, they have been steadily published in the DJD series (Discoveries in the Judaean Desert) for the last 50 years as this tremendous task has been accomplished. As someone said above, yes people were not very careful with them by today's standards, people smoked around them, drank coffee, and used the handiest invention that had just come out-"scotch tape"- to piece them together. All that said, with the exception of fragments in private collections, the last of the Dead Sea Scrolls were published in the early 90's.
This is not publishing anything new, or secret. It is being scanned and put online for the public, who doesn't have a clue what to do with them, can look at them. Scholars have known how to look at them, in the DJD, and in a half a dozen other widely available publications that have been around for decades.
Facts the dilettantes have said in these comments that have made me [face_palm]:
The Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS hereafter) were composed in Qumran, not Jerusalem. (some of the stuff is clearly copies of other documents that circulated elsewhere however)
The Qumran community responsible for the scrolls existed between the 2nd century BCE and ca 70CE during the Roman war.
There is nothing in the DSS about Jesus
There are, however, certain strong affinities between things we find in the DSS and the New Testament, including the method of scripture interpretation, some apocalyptic ideas, as well as the stuff you would expect people with the same basic religion, ethnicity and geography to share
There is nothing damaging or threatening to the modern religions of Judaism and Christianity. To be sure, the DSS are of tremendous importance for contextualizing their origin and telling us what life was like back then, but this is not a conspiracy to keep them hidden.
"The Scrolls are possibly the most important archaeological discovery of the 20th century"
No. Nowhere near. This statement is so inaccurate. Anyone who believes it must be retarded.
No citations or examples because there is just TOO MUCH and it's SO OBVIOUS. Do your own search if you really need proof.
"In any event by suggesting that those books are *not* inspired by God (which according to current scientific knowledge may or may not exist) you are taking a position that is not supported by established facts"
Two things wrong here.
The default hypothesis, the null, is that there is no such things as unicorn, faery, gods until an evidence is provided for their existence, which is why science DOES NOT look at the existence of god AT ALL, not even throwing a may or may not. It is up to the CLAIMER to provide evidence of existence. But even if you were to add god to the equation, it is still the null that every book/document were written by men and inspired by men. It would be up to the person claiming isnpiration or divine origin to provide evidence for it as the NULL is : no inspiration all human origin. There is a good reason to use the null : shift the burden of proof on the positive claimant (inspired by gods) rather than shift the burden on an impossible to prove task (was not inspired by gods).
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
The bible "allows" murder in the name of Yhwh, it allows for slavery and forced mariage/rape, and various other disgusting stuff (old testament) even the new testmaent has a lot of disgusting stuff like slavery, or even women being inferior and not beign allowed to speak up unless their man allow it (in chruch for example, corinthian), not even counting that it is "You shall not covet your neighbor's wife" and not , say , husband or significant other.
Furthermore the moral code do not come from bible or whatever, they were there before (ex. Amurabi code) and even before as soona s we were socially grouped, they are a Necessity for a stable society or group. Heck charity is even one of those. In small group you will be far more likely to help somebody not related to you, charity is only an extension of that, and is practised by non religious.
The bottom line is that the bible bring nothing new or special to the morality of its reader And as somebody said (was it hitchens) "show me any moral act which are practised by religious people and *ENEVER* practiced by any Atheist whatsoever". You won't find ANY such act. You are as moral as you as human are, and religion don't make you more or less moral. You will simply recognize YOUR morality INTO the religion.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Most Christians have never read the entire bible -- any version. Why would they read the Dead Sea scrolls?
Yeah, that happens a lot.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
I've published on the Dead Sea Scrolls
Impressive, how old are you today Methuselah?