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s the Bible we read today the on the shores of the Dead Sea, the charred parchment, without covered.
same Bible that was written and an exciting technological ever opening it.
Imillennia ago by prophets and breakthrough, that date has "Never in our wildest dreams did
apostles? That was a question moved back even further! The results were stunning! Dr. we think anything would come of
that consumed scholars for Michael Segal of the Hebrew it," said Pnina Shor, head of the
generations. Prior to 1947, the This story begins in 1970, when University in Jerusalem marvel- Dead Sea Scrolls Project at the
earliest manuscript copies of the archaeologists at En-Gedi found a led: "Much of the text is as Israeli Antiquities Authority.
Old Testament were from the burnt scroll that was little more readable, or close to as readable
Middle Ages. Critics seized on than a lump of charcoal. A fire in as actual unharmed Dead Sea Yet despite being burnt itself,
this as a major hole in the Bible’s 600 AD had destroyed the syna- Scrolls." this chapter about burnt offer-
reliability. "How," they asked, gogue there, leaving its ancient ings is now as visible to us as it
"could we trust a text that had documents so brittle that a touch That text is the first two chapters was to the scribe who copied it
been copied hundreds of times in would cause them to disintegrate. of Leviticus - ironically, a set of two thousand years ago.
the thousands of years since its Unable to read the scroll, curators instructions for burnt offerings
authors wrote it? Surely it had merely preserved it, hoping that to the Lord. But what’s really The Bible we have in the twenty-
suffered corruption through all someday, the technology neces- amazing is that the fragment is first century has been provi-
those duplications?" sary to peek at its contents would identical - letter for letter - to the dentially - one might even say,
be developed. Masoretic text that forms the miraculously - preserved against
But 70 years ago, a Bedouin basis of modern Old Testament the ravages of time. And with
shepherd boy shattered those Well, that day has arrived! The translations. each discovery of an older
doubts when he threw a rock into New York Times reports that manuscript, it becomes clearer
a cave, breaking some clay pots computer scientists at the Uni- And how old is this incredibly that what we hold today is the
containing the Dead Sea Scrolls. versity of Kentucky partnered accurate copy? Experts in same Word that God inspired
These ancient manuscripts of the with Biblical scholars in Jeru- Hebrew paleography say the thousands of years ago - no
Old Testament were near mat- salem to pioneer a technique for script style strongly suggests an matter what it’s written on. If I
ches to the medieval text, con- "unfurling" this badly-damaged origin in the first century A.D., may paraphrase Isaiah, parch-
firming our modern Bible’s anti- scroll. Thanks to traces of metal in around the time of Christ. And ment smoulders and papyrus
quity and pushing the earliest the ancient ink and a new method that, reports the Times, would flames, but the Word of our God
known evidence for the Hebrew for reconstructing 3D surfaces, make it the oldest fragment of the endures forever!
Scriptures back a millennium. known as "volume cartography", Hebrew Pentateuch - the first five - Eric Metaxas
Now, thanks to another discovery these scientists were able to read books of the Bible - ever dis- www.christianheadlines.com
