This undated photo shows an
ancient charred scroll destroyed in a fire centuries ago, the Ein Gedi scroll.
The virtually unwrapped Ein Gedi scroll.
The charred lump of a 2,000-year-old scroll
sat in an Israeli archaeologist’s storeroom for decades, too brittle to
open. Now, new imaging technology has revealed what was written inside:
the earliest evidence of a biblical text in its standardized form. The
passages from the Book of Leviticus, scholars say, offer the first
physical evidence of what has long been believed: that the version of
the Hebrew Bible used today goes back 2,000 years. The discovery, announced in a Science Advances
journal article by researchers in Kentucky and Jerusalem on Wednesday,
was made using “virtual unwrapping,” a 3D digital analysis of an X-ray
scan. Researchers say it is the first time they have been able to read
the text of an ancient scroll without having to physically open it. 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.
