WHAT’S BEING CLAIMED:
- A hidden script has been discovered in the Dead Sea scrolls by experts in Israel, using advanced imaging equipment to find letters invisible to the naked eye.
- This technology originally developed for NASA has identified new letters and words, giving a fresh insight into the historic texts.
- According to the Israel Antiquities Authority who is conducting the research, one of the fragments may even point to the existence of a previously unknown manuscript.
It was back in 1946 and 1947 when the first Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in the Qumran caves in the Judean desert. Other scrolls were found in the following years, up to 1956. A total of 1,000 ancient religious manuscripts have been discovered. It was thanks to the dark, dry conditions in the caves that the delicate fragments of parchment and papyrus were preserved for 2,000 years.
The Authority explained, “As part of the project each of the thousands of fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls is imaged in order to monitor its physical condition and make the best possible images available to the public.”
Oren Ableman, a scrolls researcher at the Israel Antiquities Authority and graduate student at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, discovered the new script.
He has examined dozens of fragments from Qumran’s “Cave 11” and discovered on many fragments some traces of ink not visible to the naked eye.
The text from the new fragments has been identified from the books of Deuteronomy, Leviticus, and Jubilees, also known as the Lesser Genesis.
There were also fragments found from the longest of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Temple Scroll. The text provides directions for conducting Temple services and the Great Psalms Scroll. Another fragment contains paleo-Hebrew letters, an ancient Hebrew script, which were not found in any known manuscripts.
The Israel Antiquities Authority declared that “This raises the possibility that it belonged to a still unknown manuscript.”
A conference was organized in Jerusalem by Hebrew University’s Orion Center for the Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Israel Antiquities Authority, the Israel Museum, the University of Vienna, and New York University, to announce the news last Tuesday.
The secrets of the Dead Sea Scrolls continue to be revealed. Even earlier this year, researchers from the University of Haifa have announced that they have finished the translation of one of the last two parts of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Source: Fox News