En-Gedi Scroll

The En-Gedi scroll is an ancient and fragile parchment found in 1970 at Ein Gedi, Israel. It contains a portion of the Biblical book of Leviticus. It is significant as one of the oldest portions of the Bible in existence,[1] and showing an important stage in the development of Hebrew scripture.

Text

According to radiocarbon testing performed by the Israel Antiquities Authority, the scroll has a probability of 88.9% of dating to 210-390 AD and 68.2% of dating to 235-340 AD.[2] The scroll was written at Ein Gedi where there was a community of Essenes,[3][4] the Jewish sect made famous for the Dead Sea Scrolls.[5]

The text translated so far consists of 18 complete lines and 17 partial lines of the first two chapters of Leviticus. The text is identical to the medieval era Masoretic Text,[6] unlike the Dead Sea scrolls which have variations from the Masoretic.[7] Emanuel Tov, of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem described the scroll "This is the earliest evidence of the exact form of the medieval text".[8]

Recovery

The ancient scroll was discovered in 1970 but was in such fragile state it disintegrated on touch and so was unable to be studied.[9][10]

To read the fragile parchment, researchers used a micro-computed tomography (micro-CT) scan followed by volume cartography software to locate of the ink within the burned scroll, and thus reconstructed the text of the document.[11] [12]

References

  1. ↑ Feltman, Rachel. "Technology unfurls delicate 1,500-year-old biblical history". Toronto Star, October 1, 2016. page IN5.
  2. ↑
  3. ↑ Pliny the Elder. Historia Naturalis. V, 17 or 29
  4. ↑ Josephus (c. 75). The Wars of the Jews. 2.119.
  5. ↑ Josephus (c. 75). The Wars of the Jews. 2.119.
  6. ↑ Laura Geggel, 1,700-Year-Old Dead Sea Scroll 'Virtually Unwrapped,' Revealing Text (Live Science, September 21, 2016)
  7. ↑ Nicholas Wade, Modern Technology Unlocks Secrets of a Damaged Biblical Scroll New York Times September 21, 2016.
  8. ↑ En-Gedi: Ancient scrolls 'virtually' deciphered to reveal earliest Old Testament scripture.
  9. ↑ Nicholas Wade (September 21, 2016). "Modern Technology Unlocks Secrets of a Damaged Biblical Scroll". The New York Times. Retrieved September 22, 2016.
  10. ↑ Seales, W. B.; Parker, C. S.; Segal, M.; Tov, E.; Shor, P.; Porath, Y. (2016). "From damage to discovery via virtual unwrapping: Reading the scroll from En-Gedi". Science Advances. 2 (9): e1601247–e1601247. doi:10.1126/sciadv.1601247. ISSN 2375-2548.
  11. ↑ Michael Greshko, Computers Decipher Burnt Scroll Found in Ancient Holy Ark (National Geographic September 21, 2016).
  12. ↑ http://www.sci-news.com/archaeology/en-gedi-scroll-deciphered-04216.html
This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 11/17/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.