[Jerusalem] — A scroll once believed to be lost to the ravages of time has been virtually unraveled and analyzed by archeologists and found to contain sections of Biblical text from the Old Testament. The find was presented on Monday to journalists in Jerusalem by Israeli Antiques Authority (IAA) archeologists who struggled to contain their excitement.
The scroll was part of a collection excavated from the remains of a synagogue discovered at Ein Gedi, near the Dead Sea, in 1970. But because archeologists were unable to decipher or preserve the fragment, it was sealed away in storage.
Now, decades later with the use of the latest scanning technologies and collaborations between academics in Israel and the United States, the secrets contained in the fragment have begun to be revealed. The scroll was carbon dated, placing it in the 6th Century, and making it the oldest copy of the Bible to have been recovered after the Dead Sea Scrolls, which date back at least to the first century.
The breakthrough was enabled in part thanks to work done by the team of W. Brent Seales, a chairman of the Department of Computer Science at the University of Kentucky. Although Seales’ team was able to view the scroll for the first time using pioneering software techniques, the American group was unable to read Hebrew.
The images were returned to Pnina Shor, curator and director of the Dead Sea Scrolls Project at the IAA. “When we saw it we almost fainted,” Shor said of the first look at the script. The archeologists then matched the text to the modern written Bible. “This is how we found out it was part of Leviticus,” Shor said.
The ability to scan the charred fragment is credited to a third collaborator, David Merkel, the CEO of Merkel Technologies. He explained to The Media Line how he had read an article detailing the IAA’s efforts to unravel mysteries locked away in ancient scrolls using a medical scanner in a local hospital. “When I saw that, I realized that we might be able to help,” said Merkel, whose company produces micro high-definition CT scanners.
With the addition of Merkel’s high-resolution scanners, hundreds of photographs of the scroll could be taken. These were then analyzed using the software at the University of Kentucky, which allowed the team’s efforts to come together.
The revelation of the text within the scroll was clearly a joy to Dr. Sefi Porath, the archeologist who had discovered the ancient synagogue back in 1970. Porath admitted that he had always hoped to one day read the scroll but had known that “not all hopes are realized.”
Technology played a pivotal role in the realization of that hope, Porath told The Media Line. “It (technology) allows us to get free from all the small details. We can use the computer for writing and photographing all of the details, analyzing the DNA of the animals,” Porath said, alluding to the fact that the text was originally written on the hide of domesticated animals.
According to Porath, the next step for the team was to begin to compare the modern day Bible to what was contained in the scrolls as sentence-by-sentence, the ancient Torah is revealed.