As part of Google’s mission to index the world’s information and bring it online, the search giant has brought the Dead Sea Scrolls to the Web.
Written between the third and first centuries BCE, the Dead Sea Scrolls can now be accessed in a number of interactive ways online, including in English translation from Hebrew.
Dr. Adolfo D. Roitman, Curator of the Dead Sea Scrolls at the Israel Museum, where they’ve been housed said: “Since 1965 you’ve had to come to the shrine of the book, you’ve had to be physically in Jerusalem to see the scrolls. Today, after 2000 years, thanks to Google’s technology, these documents are online.”
In all, there are 5 Dead Sea Scrolls available online: the Great Isaiah Scroll, the largest, oldest, most famous, and best preserved; the War Scroll, the Temple Scroll, the Community Rule Scroll, and Commentary on the Habakkuk Scroll.
In 68 BCE these scrolls were hidden in 11 caves in the Judean desert on the banks of the Dead Sea to protect them from the advancing Roman army. A Bedouin discovered them in 1947, nearly 2000 years later, by throwing a rock into one of the caves.
Photographer and archivist Ardon Bar-Hama took high-resolution (1,200 megapixels) photographs of the Dead Sea Scrolls–that’s over 200 times higher resolution than the best consumer cameras.
You can study the Great Isaiah Scroll, which is also found in traditional Bibles, by chapter and verse. Click directly on the Hebrew text and get an English translation. You can even leave a comment for others to see.
Also, the scroll text is available by web search. According to the Google blog:
“If you search for phrases from the scrolls, a link to that text within the scroll viewers on the Dead Sea Scrolls collections site may surface in your search results. For example, search for [Dead Sea Scrolls "In the day of thy planting thou didst make it to grow"], and you may see a link to Chapter 17:Verse 11 within the Great Isaiah Scroll.”