Computers Decipher Burnt Scroll Found In Ancient Holy Ark (nationalgeographic.com)

bsharma writes: Scientists have formally announced their reconstruction of the Ein Gedi Scroll, the most ancient Hebrew scroll since the Dead Sea Scrolls. This was done by CAT scanning the burnt scrolls and virtually reconstructing the layers of scrolls with ink blobs on them. National Geographic reports: "For decades, the Israel Antiquities Authority guarded the document, known as the Ein Gedi Scroll, careful not to open it for fear that the brittle text would shatter to pieces. But last year, scientists announced that they had scanned, virtually unrolled, and translated the scroll's hidden verses -- a feat now formally described in the scientific literature. Based on preliminary scans, [Brent Seales of the University of Kentucky, who specialized in digitally reconstructing damaged texts,] and his colleagues announced in 2015 that the Ein Gedi Scroll was a biblical text from the sixth century A.D. containing a column of text from the book of Leviticus. But the full CT scan results, published on Wednesday in Science Advances, tell a deeper story. Further analysis revealed an extra column of text, ultimately fleshing out the first two chapters of Leviticus -- ironically, a book that begins with God's instructions for burnt offerings. What's more, radiocarbon dating of the scroll suggests that it may be between 1,700 and 1,800 years old, at least 200 years older than previously thought. In fact, the scroll's distinctive handwriting hearkens back to the first or second century A.D., some five centuries earlier than the date ascribed to the scroll last year." University of Cambridge lecturer James Aitken told Smithsonian's Devin Powell in 2015: "There's little of surprise in finding a Leviticus scroll. We probably have many more copies of it than any other book, as its Hebrew style is so simple and repetitive that it was used for children's writing exercises."

Comments

Obligatory..

[Monoman]

"Be sure to drink your Ovaltine."

Re: Obligatory..

[tysonedwards]

Archaeologists near Mount Sinai have discovered what is believed to be a missing page from the Bible. The page is presently being carbon dated in Bonn. If genuine it belongs at the beginning of the Bible and is believed to read "To my darling Candy. All characters portrayed within this book are fictitious and any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental." The page has been universally condemned by church leaders.

Re: Obligatory..

[sciengin]

As if todays church leaders would give a damn about what is written in the bible...

In one of his letters, Paul explicitly warns the congregation in one city against the teachings of "people who forbid to marry" and linkens this to demon-inspired utterings.
Did not stop the church to forbid its priests to marry until this day, all for the sake of money (well inheritance really).

And lets not forget Jesus saying, on the night of hist arrest, "Those who take up the sword will die by the sword". Now preventing the arresting of Jesus (as Peter had just tried to do) was certainly THE most noble cause to take up the sword. So if even for this it was forbidden, how much more for the inter-human wars.
And yet today hardly an army marches out without having its weapons blessed by the priests or clerics.

Re:Obligatory..

[s122604]

sonofabitch!

Re: Obligatory..

[mrchaotica]

No, he was suggesting exactly the opposite: that any sort of tolerance (let alone support) for war is anti-Christian, so priests etc. should be condemning armies instead of blessing them.

Re: Obligatory..

[Dread_ed]

Not to be pedantic, just precise, the wording of the passage you mention about "taking up the sword" refers specifically to criminality and not to war.

Re: Obligatory..

[FatdogHaiku]

Well, now you're forcing me to post a Monty Python link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOrgLj9lOwk

Re: Obligatory..

[rickb928]

For clarity;

At least in my church our pastors preach FROM THE BIBLE. They give more than a damn about what is written in the Bible.

My church, and indeed virtually all of Protestant/Reformed Christianity does not forbid pastors, priests, whatever you call them to marry. The Catholic Church still does. Calling the Catholic Church "the church" is imprecise, lazy, or deliberately misleading. Or you don't really care, which is unfortunate.

Jesus did indeed correct Peter when He was arrested. There may be righteous justifications for war, which is a longstanding debate of which there is much commentary you could find and consider. I will not repeat or paraphrase those more learned than I in this matter.

Re: Obligatory..

[rickb928]

More clarity :
As you should know, the Mosaic covenant is superceded, overridden, by the new covenant in Christ. Those who continue to obey the Law at bound by it, but those who believe in Christ not only need not, but are given a new covenant, fulfilled in Him.

This is a central point of Christianity, one you cannot be ignorant of. Unless you've done no study, in which case I encourage your attention. There is much literature, many essays, much discussion, going back to Christ Himself.

Your complaint is noted, and has been answered for centuries.

Re: Obligatory..

[dbreeze]

Chuck Missler is simply one of the best teachers of the Bible I've come across in 35+ years of faith in Jesus. He comes from an extensive technical background, focused on information technologies. I highly recommend anyone with honest questions to look into his work.
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?... https://www.khouse.org/ http://www.youtube.com/user/ko...

  Above all else, read for yourself. It takes a decent overall perspective to make sense of much of the specifics, but it's really not that hard of a read. Certainly the most remarkable book I've ever encountered...

Re:Older = Better

[Opportunist]

Well, the closer it is to the original. You know the old joke where the curator of the monastery came up from the vault with the original texts and cried "Dammit, in the original it read 'celebRate'!"

"it was used for children's writing exercises"

[Viol8]

Which frankly is all the faction and outright fairy tales in all religious tomes are really any use for.

Re:"it was used for children's writing exercises"

[Feral Nerd]

Tell that to all the Star Wars misfits around here. Grown men still obsessed with a plaything of their youth.

And how is that any more weird than grown people believing they must modify their behaviour according to the whims of some guy who's set himself up as a priest/prophet/grand-poobah and who says that if they don't obey his imaginary friend (whom only he can see and hear) will destroy them in a rain of fire and brimstone and then send them to spend eternity in an inferno for whose existence there isn't a shred of proof? Say what you will about Lucas hounds, making Jediism the fourth largest 'religion' in the UK was sheer genius and one of the best demonstrations of how nonsensical religion really is other than Pastafarianism which is also pretty cool. In the UK they've actually got prisoners suing the prison system for failing to recognise Jediism as a religion. Some 2.6% of the city of Bristol claimed to be Jedi in a census. In Germany a guy actually got his local council to allow him to hang out an official road sign directing people to his Pastafarian church. The sign also contains information about when Pastafarian services are held. The thing looks awesome next to the church signs: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/f...

Re:"it was used for children's writing exercises"

[geantvert]

More generally, "name calling" should be the expected behavior when asking almost any complex question to any large group of persons.

However, in that specific case, Richard Dawkins has the expected default position of any atheist (including me): The existence of an invisible unproven magic being cannot be the answer to any complex phenomena observed in the real world (in that case, that would be the origin of life). That position implies that there are things that we cannot explain with our current understanding of nature (you know, that thing called science).

Improving science by looking for more clues in the real world is the right way to handle those mysteries. Claiming "Magic", "God", "Taboo" or "Holy Book" is not.

Re:"it was used for children's writing exercises"

[jellomizer]

The problem is the old lame argument of trying to prove your point by changing the wording to a negative context.

Calling a Religion a FairyTale implies it is a set of overly simplistic stories meant for children.

While most religious text are a combination of written history philosophy of the time, mixed with rules for often a nomadic society to function in a world which is often against them.

The 10 commandments (where they are more than 10, and different religions count them differently and group them in different ways) were less about how to be good. But dealing with property and inheritance rights.

Re:"it was used for children's writing exercises"

[DrXym]

It's called abiogenisis and there are various plausible hypotheses. But even if someone were to demonstrate a self assembling and self replicating molecule through one of these processes it doesn't say that's how they occured on Earth over 3.5 billion years ago. But just because something is unknowable does it become god-did-it.

Re:"it was used for children's writing exercises"

[Ol Olsoc]

Atheism is a religion for most who 'believe' in it.

Every Sunday, atheists gather in their athiest churches (tax exempt by the way) and pray to (no one) to show theiir lack of faith in no one.

Then at night, before they go to bed, they pray to (no one) to keep themselves and their family safe and healthy.

Likewise, in times of stress, they also pray to (no one) petitioning (no one) for an outcome they desire.

Then after a hopefully long life lived according to their belief in (no one), when they shift this mortal coil, the eternal soul that they don't have will forever be in teh presence of (no one)

I think you are mistaking the fact that atheists, like all humans, can be assholes, just like the people of faith in a deity can be assholes at time.

Finally, the faithful tend to think about their particular deity all the time. I know I only think about a deity when we have these discussions and people try to tell me I have a religion. As a recovering Catholic, I know the difference well. But otherwise nope, sorry, no religion here.

Re:"it was used for children's writing exercises"

[Ol Olsoc]

Improving science by looking for more clues in the real world is the right way to handle those mysteries. Claiming "Magic", "God", "Taboo" or "Holy Book" is not.

Which ties into the "God of the gaps" argument, which over time, has been used to explain everything we do not know. Once upon a time, psychosis, birth defects, seemingly spontaneous biogenisis, the entire external universe and so much else were attributed to divinity because we just didn't know.

Then over time more and more was learned that fit the once mysterious things into the natural world, and the God of the gaps became popular.

Now the God of the Gaps has become quite small indeed. People who would claim that every word of the King James Bible is the exact word of God as revealed to man believe and take for granted, things that would have them burnt at the stake for heresy in an earlier time.

Re:"it was used for children's writing exercises"

[Opportunist]

That's basically the joke. Atheism is just rejecting one more holy story as a fairy tale than every believer does.

Re:"it was used for children's writing exercises"

[rfengr]

How did the first self-replicating molecule originate? Know one knows, but "I don't know" is a lot better answer than "God did it".

Re:"it was used for children's writing exercises"

[SecurityGuy]

Atheism is no more a religion than an empty glass contains a kind of beer.

What I detest is asshole, self described 'atheists' who have the need to inform religious people that they are stupid for believing in fairy tales and having faith.

I tend to leave religious people strictly alone, so long as they aren't harming or advocating harming anyone else. I think the notion of believing in a religion, and especially an afterlife, would be very comforting. Certainly, a lot of my extended family find it so. Really, the only time I ever want to argue against religion is when people use it as a weapon against others.

Re:"it was used for children's writing exercises"

[Opportunist]

The Bible has many WTF moments when you read it, but for some reason back then it must've seemed ok to the people back then. I mean, if god supports Jacob's trick and doesn't punish him for being an asshole and swindling his brother out of his firstborn rights, does god condone such behaviour?

Then again, when you look at Job, God can be quite the asshole himself.

Re:"it was used for children's writing exercises"

[gtall]

"And He who made kittens put snakes in the grass"

Re:"it was used for children's writing exercises"

[cmdr_klarg]

How did the first self-replicating molecule originate? Know one knows, but "I don't know" is a lot better answer than "God did it".

Unfortunately many induhviduals have an almost pathological aversion to the words "I don't know". "God did it" is a nice comfortable catch-all to explain away the unknown, because the unknown is frightening to them.

Re:"it was used for children's writing exercises"

[Camel Pilot]

It is no accident that the alleged god takes on attributes of megalomaniac warlord/monarch.

Re:Older = Better

[rainmouse]

But when the original is culturally dependent, word-of-mouth stories that vary more dramatically the 'closer' you get. Surely the culture built up over millennia becomes more important. I suspect the main value of this is just understanding historical cultural ideals 'at the time' rather than any positive or negative religious insights.

How much do they vary?

[Khomar]

You make an assertion that there are "dramatic" changes in the text, but is that true?

Here is an example of analysis of the Great Isaiah Scroll from the Dead Sea scroll find. It dates to 200 B.C., only 500 years after Isaiah wrote the original and over one thousand years older than the previously used manuscript (used in the King James Version of the Bible).

Is that a "dramatic" change the closer you get?

Re:How much do they vary?

[Opportunist]

If you want dramatic change, you have to translate it to a different language.

The joke is that the Old Testament we have today is probably closer to the original text than the New one.

Re:How much do they vary?

[AthanasiusKircher]

You make an assertion that there are "dramatic" changes in the text, but is that true?

This is a good point. The Hebrew text of the Bible is remarkably stable in copies dating back almost 2000 years. Anyone who has spent time tracing families of manuscript sources in, for example, medieval Europe will realize how unstable many sources are compared to the Hebrew text. Copyists in most medieval treatises frequently made errors or omissions or even inserted their own variations, corrections, or commentary.

That said, rabbis are pretty aware of the variations in ancient sources --- perhaps most notably, the differences between the Masoretic text (the standard Hebrew edition dating to medieval times) and the Septuagint (an ancient translation of the Hebrew text into Greek), as well as the Samaritan Pentateuch (a rendering in the Samaritan alphabet of the first books of the Bible, which has lots of mostly minor variants). These variants are important to rabbinical commentary and exegesis.

Re:How much do they vary?

[hackertourist]

One of the reasons the Hebrew text was stable was because they used checksums when copying. Each letter in the Hebrew alphabet is also used as a number. That made it easy to calculate checksums for each line of text.

Re:How much do they vary?

[AthanasiusKircher]

One of the reasons the Hebrew text was stable was because they used checksums when copying. Each letter in the Hebrew alphabet is also used as a number. That made it easy to calculate checksums for each line of text.

Actually, there were a number of reasons for the stability. The "checksums," as you put it, were more associated with medieval Kabbalistic practices that date from probably more than a millennium after the "stable" version had basically been established. (And I'm not sure any scribes actually did this sort of "checksumming" in this way on any scale; only the "Bible code" wackos today seem to think so.)

Instead, you had a confluence of a number of factors:

(1) A tremendous set of ritualistic requirements for copying came about at a very early stage, which made copying the Torah distinct from any other scribal task. Scribes were required to take extra care with everything from ink quality to page layout. And they were to make verbal checks when copying every word, as well as other various checks (but mostly involved counting words and letters, not "summing" them).

(2) A rabbinical tradition was already in place nearly 2000 years ago which created a giant commentary on top of the actual text. Rabbis emphasized that even a single error in a single letter could create problems in accurate commentary, and the commentary itself often depended on tiny details of wording. (Remember all those stories of Jesus where he criticizes the "elders" and such for paying too much attention to details of the text so they forgot the broader meaning... that's what he was talking about. It was a new fad at that time, which caught on.) Hence, even if an error in copying occurred in the text, you could spot it by the fact that it disagreed with the commentaries by learned rabbis. (It's sort of like if you had documentation for code that explained every single operation in detail. Even if the original code became corrupted, you could reconstruct it from the documentation.)

(3) Finally, you had the fact that a lot of Jews were slaughtered by the Romans and other folks in the early centuries of the first millennium, around the time many of these exacting traditions had developed. Thus, any competing editions/variants were likely to be lost (burned down with synagogues, etc.), with only a few official copies preserved. Those few copies -- whatever their source -- then became the dominant text once the others had been lost.

So yeah, scribes could check the text in many ways, but there were various events and ideologies that helped that process along.

Who's reviewing the scrolls?

[rlp]

Who's reviewing the scrolls? Top men ...

The Book of Armaments, Chapter 4, Verses 16 to 20

[Mr Foobar]

Then did he raise on high the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch, saying, "Bless this, O Lord, that with it thou mayst blow thine enemies to tiny bits, in thy mercy." And the people did rejoice and did feast upon the lambs and toads and tree-sloths and fruit-bats and orangutans and breakfast cereals ... Now did the Lord say, "First thou pullest the Holy Pin. Then thou must count to three. Three shall be the number of the counting and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither shalt thou count two, excepting that thou then proceedeth to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the number of the counting, be reached, then lobbest thou the Holy Hand Grenade in the direction of thine foe, who, being naughty in my sight, shall snuff it."

And they discovered that Slashdot has gone to Hell

[davmoo]

This thread is a perfect example of what's becoming of Slashdot. Instead of comments and insights on the awesome science and tech it took to read an up-to-now unreadable ancient document, almost every comment here is a comment about whether religion is fact or fiction and is *completely* off topic. The science behind this is pretty amazing, and could lead to being able to read other ancient burned documents like those found at Herculaneum from the time of its destruction by Vesuvius. But you people are apparently more interested in bashing religion than celebrating actual science and technical advances.

I'd be far more interested in what comes next

[DrXym]

Seales says he's working on hundreds of scorched scrolls uncovered from Herculaneum. To me that would be a FAR more interesting project. They might discover lost Greek texts or other works of antiquity. Even if its just tax returns, local ordinances or mundane records related to daily life it would still be interesting.

Re:I'd be far more interested in what comes next

[jandersen]

They might discover lost Greek texts or other works of antiquity

Or much more interesting: Etruscan texts, of which there woefully few. The Estruscan language appears to be unrelated to any other known language, from the very few inscriptions we do have.

Re:And they discovered that Slashdot has gone to H

[Anonymous Coward]

The obvious conclusion is that we need to get rid of the reddit atheist kiddies who feel the need to shit up every decent discussion with their euphoric fedoras.

Re:Older = Better

[AthanasiusKircher]

Well, the closer it is to the original

Actually, something left out of the summary is the textual significance of this find. Some of the researchers involved have noted that this is the earliest text found so far that is identical to the Masoretic text, a medieval version which is the standard Hebrew edition often used today (not only in the original but as the basis of many modern translations, etc.).

Previous finds have shown that a set of "proto-Masoretic" variants begins to emerge as a standard around 2000 years ago (before that, there were wider textual variants). But previous fragments actually identical to the Masoretic were only known to date to centuries after this one. Depending on whose dating you believe, this scroll places the origin of this standard text version perhaps back to 1700-2000 years ago.

It's also significant because it's a biblical fragment recovered from an ark in a synagogue, where it may have actually been used, as opposed to the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were preserved in desert caves and might represent a less 'standard" source tradition.

Again, a lot of this is speculative, but in this case the find is actually significant in pushing back the date when a "standard" Hebrew text may have begun to emerge.

Re:And they discovered that Slashdot has gone to H

[AthanasiusKircher]

The science behind this is pretty amazing, and could lead to being able to read other ancient burned documents like those found at Herculaneum from the time of its destruction by Vesuvius.

Just to note -- the computer techniques for reconstructing text from scrolls here were actually developed within a project for analyzing the scrolls from the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum. This biblical scroll application was just another use of this computer analysis technique, showing its power to deal with even very badly burned and less intact fragments.

Re:Older = Better

[avgjoe62]

But the more about the ancients we discover, the less primitive the people seem

The older I get, the more I learn about the other people sharing this planet and those that preceded us, the more I believe that we are all the same, for the most part. We all have the same basic wants and needs, the same basic drives. What separates me from a Roman living under Augustus or an Egyptian living in the time of Ramses is more a matter of the trappings of technology than the core of our beings.

As a kid I was always struck by this quote from Khan in the Star trek episode Space Seed

Nothing ever changes, except man. Your technical accomplishments? Improve a mechanical device and you may double productivity, but improve man and you gain a thousandfold. I am such a man.

There's no Khans running around yet. So we are pretty much as we have always been, except for some immunity to some diseases that our ancestors paid for.

Re:And they discovered that Slashdot has gone to H

[Ol Olsoc]

This thread is a perfect example of what's becoming of Slashdot.

So, start a subthread on the technology. Seems like a way to get people talking about technology.

Slashdot has a seriously diverse readership. In any given topic, you'll get the usual suspects

The clueless noobs who are still learning.

The trolls

The "Get off my lawn" crowd, who probably are suffering from testosterone deprivation.

People who are actually interested.

Since this tech was introduced in reference to an ancient burnt Middle Eastern scroll, and it turned out to be Leviticus, of all things, its simply going to attract a diverse audience.

Now if we wanted to deal with a less flamebaity version of the same, since the NatGeo article is pretty devoid of the technology, try this: http://www.livescience.com/560...

We can't control others, only ourselves. There in that link is the start of a technology discussion.

To put it another way...

[Viol8]

... Atheism is a religion in the same way that NOT playing football is a sport.

Re:To put it another way...

[painandgreed]

... Atheism is a religion in the same way that NOT playing football is a sport.

Yes, yes, but we're pretty much just as sick of people telling how superior they are by not liking football as we are as by the people who constantly rant how they love football. Same goes for not stamp collecting and other hobbies.

Re:To put it another way...

[Ol Olsoc]

... Atheism is a religion in the same way that NOT playing football is a sport.

Yes, yes, but we're pretty much just as sick of people telling how superior they are by not liking football as we are as by the people who constantly rant how they love football. Same goes for not stamp collecting and other hobbies.

I grew up in a town where religion had a stranglhold on us. No Sunday stores open, No legally required sex education, Anything that showed the earth might be older than 6000 years removed form the curriculum, priests who liked to fuck little boys, And even without getting sexually abused, daily reminders of how you were going to hell if you didn't toe the line, I'd like to apologize for your inconvenience of people who are sick and tired of your shit.

The religious can dish it out, but they cannot take it.

Re:Older = Better

[darkain]

If you had bothered to read the rest of that statement right here in the summary on slashdot, you'd realize that the "second column of text" is the second chapter. This isn't a case of adding/removing/doctoring text, it is a case of initially they had a single column (chapter) of text visible and through more work managed to reveal the second column (chapter) of text.

Fun facts

[Anonymous Coward]

1) There are two words for Hell in the greek language (Hades, Tartarus). Jesus never once said either one of them. He sometimes used the valley of Gehenna (which was right on the edge of the city of Jerusalem, and used as the city dump) in his metaphors, but the translators decided to change that to "hell." This isn't a translation..."Gehenna" does not and never did mean "hell" in any language. This is a changing of what he said, which has become codified as the standard in nearly all English translations of the Bible. When you stay true to the text, it is obvious that Jesus is not establishing a doctrine of literal everlasting torture, but is just using the city dump in a metaphor to say something about morality.

2) The greek word used to refer to God's dwelling place means "sky." Just "sky." It has been translated to "heaven" to make it sound more spiritual.

3) The greek word translated as "spirit" and sometimes "ghost" just means "breath." It is a simple word, common use, nothing technical or mysterious about it. It just means breath. Also, it is gender-neutral, and the pronouns used to refer to it are gender neutral. In English the holy breath (rendered "holy spirit") is referred to as "he", but in greek it really says "it." These changes make it sound like a person, but the greek text absolutely does not.

4) The greek word translated as "savior" (and "save") really just means "heal." Every time you see phrases like "Jesus the savior" or "Jesus saves us all" it would be more accurately translated "Jesus the healer" and "Jesus heals us all." But, in order to better fit the doctrines of the roman church, the rendering is slanted.

5) The greek word translated as "believe" really means "trust." It is a very emotional word, and not an intellectual word. All these passages about "those who believe in him" make it sound like one must take a strict intellectual position in order to be part of the kingdom of heaven, but an honest rendering of the text gives one a whole lot more elbow room to interpret what they are talking about.

6) Jesus said, in the Gospel of Luke, that the Kingom of heaven is not here or there, but is within you. Many translations have twisted this verse to say "among" or other variants, to try and obscure the fact that Jesus simply came clean about the fact that the "kingdom of heaven" is just a metaphor for a state of mind.

Christianity is not based on the Bible. The Bible is full of misleading translations to twist it to fit Christian doctrines, most of which were cooked up by utterly corrupt politicians, centuries after Jerusalem was sacked.