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SCIENTISTS FINALLY READ THE OLDEST BIBLICAL TEXT EVER FOUND
The charred lump of scroll sat in an archaeologist’s office,
impossible to read without destroying it – until now
Andrew Griffin
Scientists have finally been able to read the oldest biblical text ever found.
The 2,000-year-old scroll has been in the hands of archaeologists for
decades. But it hasn’t been possible to read it, since it was too
dangerous to open the charred and brittle scroll.
Scientists have now been able to read it, using special imaging
technology that can look into what’s inside. And it has found what was
in there: the earliest evidence of a biblical text in its standardised
form.
The passages, which come from the Book of Leviticus, show the first
physical evidence of a long-held belief that the Hebrew Bible that’s
in use today has is more than 2,000 years old.
The discovery was announced in an article in Science Advances written
by researchers from Kentucky and Jerusalem. It described how the
researchers used a tool called “virtual unwrapping”, which provides a
3D digital analysis of an X-ray scan.
Read more Ancient cemetery could solve one of the Bible’s biggest mysteries
By using that, it was the first time that researchers have been able
to read an ancient scroll without actually opening it.
"You can't imagine the joy in the lab," said Pnina Shor of the Israel
Antiquities Authority, who participated in the study.
The digital technology, funded by Google and the U.S. National Science
Foundation, is slated to be released to the public as open source
software by the end of next year.
Researchers hope to use the technology to peek inside other ancient
documents too fragile to unwrap, like some of the Dead Sea Scrolls and
papyrus scrolls carbonized in the Mt. Vesuvius volcano eruption in 79
CE. Researchers believe the technology could also be applied to the
fields of forensics, intelligence, and antiquities conservation.
The biblical scroll examined in the study was first discovered by
archaeologists in 1970 at Ein Gedi, the site of an ancient Jewish
community near the Dead Sea. Inside the ancient synagogue's ark,
archaeologists found lumps of scroll fragments.
The synagogue was destroyed in an ancient fire, charring the scrolls.
The dry climate of the area kept them preserved, but when
archaeologists touched them, the scrolls would begin to disintegrate.
So the charred logs were shelved for nearly half a century, with no
one knowing what was written inside.
Last year, Yosef Porath, the archaeologist who excavated at Ein Gedi
in 1970, walked into the Israel Antiquities Authority's Dead Sea
Scrolls preservation lab in Jerusalem with boxes of the charcoal
chunks. The lab has been creating hi-resolution images of the Dead Sea
Scrolls, the earliest copies of biblical texts ever discovered, and he
asked researchers to scan the burned scrolls.
"I looked at him and said, 'you must be joking,"' said Shor, who heads the lab.
She agreed, and a number of burned scrolls were scanned using
X-ray-based micro-computed tomography, a 3D version of the CT scans
hospitals use to create images of internal body parts. The images were
then sent to William Brent Seales, a researcher in the computer
science department of the University of Kentucky. Only one of the
scrolls could be deciphered.
Using the "virtual unwrapping" technology, he and his team
painstakingly captured the three-dimensional shape of the scroll's
layers, using a digital triangulated surface mesh to make a virtual
rendering of the parts they suspected contained text. They then
searched for pixels that could signify ink made with a dense material
like iron or lead. The researchers then used computer modeling to
virtually flatten the scroll, to be able to read a few columns of text
inside.
"Not only were you seeing writing, but it was readable," said Seales.
"At that point we were absolutely jubilant."
The researchers say it is the first time a biblical scroll has been
discovered in an ancient synagogue's holy ark, where it would have
been stored for prayers, and not in desert caves like the Dead Sea
Scrolls.
The discovery holds great significance for scholars' understanding of
the development of the Hebrew Bible, researchers say.
In ancient times, many versions of the Hebrew Bible circulated. The
Dead Sea Scrolls, dating to as early as the 3rd century B.C., featured
versions of the text that are radically different than today's Hebrew
Bible.
Scholars have believed the Hebrew Bible in its standard form first
came about some 2,000 years ago, but never had physical proof, until
now, according to the study. Previously the oldest known fragments of
the modern biblical text dated back to the 8th century.
The text discovered in the charred Ein Gedi scroll is "100 percent
identical" to the version of the Book of Leviticus that has been in
use for centuries, said Dead Sea Scroll scholar Emmanuel Tov from the
Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who participated in the study.
"This is quite amazing for us," he said. "In 2,000 years, this text
has not changed."
Noam Mizrahi, a Dead Sea Scrolls expert at Tel Aviv University who did
not participate in the study, called it a "very, very nice find." He
said the imaging technology holds great potential for more readings of
unopened Dead Sea Scrolls.
"It's not only what was found, but the promise of what else it can
uncover, which is what will turn this into an exciting discovery,"
Mizrahi said.
