Digital Copies

Since 1996, Universities have been trying to upload the scrolls for the wider world to see. Recently the text of nearly all the non-biblical scrolls has been recorded and tagged for morphology (identification, analysis and description of structure of words-lingustics) by Dr Martin Abegg Jr the Ben Zion Wacholder Professor of Dead Sea Scrolls Studies at Trinity Western University in Langley, BC Canada. It is available on hand-held devices through Olive Tree Bible Software-Biblereader, on Macs through Accordance and on Windows through Logos Bible Software and BibleWorks.

Last year, scientists had taken digital photographs of the scrolls enabling scholars and the public to have access to the 2000-year-old documents. Using powerful cameras and lights that emit no damaging heat or ultraviolet beams, scientists in Israel have been able to decipher sections and letters in the scrolls invisible to the naked eye.
The scrolls, most of them on parchment, are the oldest copies of the Hebrew Bible and include secular text dating from the third century BC to the first century AD.
A team of specialists has taken 4000 pictures of some 9000 fragments that make up the scrolls, which number 900 in total. A few large pieces of scroll are on permanent display at the Israel Museum.

Scientists hope the advanced imaging technology will also help them better preserve the scrolls by detecting any deterioration caused by humidity and heat.

Controversy Surrounding the Scrolls

In a new book to be published this month, Rachel Elior of Jerusalem's Hebrew University claims that the authors, the Essenes, a religious group, who wrote the dead sea scrolls did not exist, and that the scrolls are fiction .

Many scholars claim that the Essenes were the first Christians, or were related to John the Baptist and to Jesus Christ. Prof. James Charlesworth, a senior Bible scholar who also specializes in the Dead Sea Scrolls, Josephus and the Gospel of John, believes John the Baptist lived among the Essenes for at least a year and drew some of his central ideas from them. While mainstream scholarship maintains the Essenes or the Qumran sect that lived near the Dead Sea wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls, a few scholars believe the scrolls had been written in Jerusalem or elsewhere and were brought to the Dead Sea at a later stage. Last month the controversy over the identity of the scrolls' authors was thrust into the headlines with the arrest of Raphael Golb, son of Dead Sea Scrolls scholar Prof. Norman Golb of the University of Chicago, on suspicion of impersonating a rival scholar. Norman Golb has claimed the Dead Sea Scrolls had not been written by the Essenes and that scholars who oppose him are trying to silence him. He described the senior scrolls' scholars as a united sect or guild, no less fanatic that the Qumran sect they claim has written the scrolls.

"I don't believe they ever existed," Elior told ABC News in a telephone interview last month. "They are not mentioned anywhere in any Jewish texts written at the time. There is absolutely no historic evidence to support their existence."
The Essenes are only mentioned by the ancient writers Pliny the Elder, Philo of Alexandria and the early Jewish historian Josephus -- and then only briefly. The accounts of all three writers differ in significant details.
Elior, a professor of Jewish philosophy and mysticism, says that shortly after the scrolls were discovered, an Israeli academic was given brief access to them. The writings reminded him of the Essenes mentioned by Josephus and so, according to Elior, the academic world set off down the wrong track and has been on it ever since.

Published initially in Hebrew only, Elior's work,"Memory and Oblivion" will likely further inflame the argument. She vehemently denies she is trying to add fuel to the fire and claims her theory is based on nothing more than common sense.

History of the Dead Sea Scrolls

The Dead Sea scrolls were discovered in 11 caves along the northwest shore of the Dead Sea Scrolls (Qumran) between the years 1947 and 1956. The area is 13 miles east of Jerusalem and is 1300 feet below sea level.



The Scrolls appear to be the library of a Jewish sect called the Essenes. The library was hidden away in caves around the outbreak of the 1st Jewish Revolt (AD 66-70) as the Roman army advanced against the rebel Jews.

The Dead sea scrolls enhance our knowledge of both Judiasm and Christianity. They represent a non-rabbinic form of Judiasm and provide a wealth of comparative material for New Testament scholars, including many important parallels to the Jesus Movement. They show Christianity to be rooted in Judiasm and have been called the evolutionary link between the two.