The Dead Sea Scrolls, one of the most sought after religious documents in the world, is to be made available to all on the Internet. The process, which will see every one of the thousands of parchment fragments digitally photographed, will take between one and two years.

The 2,000-year-old Dead Sea Scrolls were found near the Dead Sea east of Jerusalem back in the 1940s, and since then have been carefully looked after and studied by a small group of scholars. The Scrolls, which together form the earliest known copies of the Hebrew Bible, are made up of a few large parchments, and as many as 15,000 other fragments.

The Scrolls are a key document in the history of both the Jewish and Christian religions, and have therfore been much sought after by scholars around the world. Some of the Scrolls are on display at the Israel Museum, but access to the rest is highly guarded and not given lightly.

This is to ensure that the Scrolls do not degrade too much, as any exposure to light or heat can irreparably damage the fine material the historic words are printed on. The Dead Sea Scrolls were published in their entirety in 2001, but now steps are being taken to give wider access to the ancient texts, to everyone interested in them, via the Internet.

According to The New York Times, the Scrolls are currently being photographed with high-powered digital cameras ready for their airing on the Web in a few years time. As a result of this, scholars are also uncovering previously illegible parts of the texts.

Pnina Shor, head of the conservation department of the Israel Antiquities Authority said:

The project began as a conservation necessity. We wanted to monitor the deterioration of the scrolls and realized we needed to take precise photographs to watch the process. That’s when we decided to do a comprehensive set of photos, both in color and infrared, to monitor selectively what is happening.

We realized then that we could make the entire set of pictures available online to everyone, meaning that anyone will be able to see the scrolls in the kind of detail that no one has until now.

This is obviously a very necessary and careful undertaking that will eventually see one of the most important historical documents currently in existence become a part of the Internet, and accessible by all.

When the process is complete and the documents are put online in a few years time, everyone who has ever wanted to study the Dead Sea Scrolls, but hasn’t been able to get anywhere near to them, will finally have their chance.

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Entry was posted on Wednesday, August 27th, 2008 at 3:16 pm under Internet, Opinion, Science and technology.

Read more entries by Dave Parrack.
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