See the Dead Sea Scrolls

“Go under this structure, and inside, you can read all about the Essenes themselves, much of which we'd already considered by visiting Qumran. But the centrepiece is sections of the Scrolls themselves on display, including the Great Isaiah Scroll which contains a full copy of the whole of Isaiah. The original scroll itself used to be on display, mounted in a massive metal casing that be lowered and locked into the ground if there's any security risk; now they've replaced even that with a facsimile (but kept the bomb-proof display cabinet). This was absolutely mind-blowing to see. A full copy of Isaiah from before the time of Jesus. My Hebrew is exceedingly rusty, and the text is not pointed (no vowels), making it even harder to read. But it was fun to work out where the beginning is, and to realise that I could start to make things out in this ancient text. There it was: "The vision of Isaiah son of Amos, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem..." (and then I got lost!)”

“The scrolls were often contained in pottery jars, and though many of the scrolls are damaged, it is astonishing that so many of them are in good enough condition to read, or piece together. Two thousand years is a long time for a piece of parchment (animal skin) or papyrus (made from plants) to survive. Scientists attribute the miraculous preservation to the dry conditions in the caves. After all, you need moisture for microbe growth and decomposition. Using radiocarbon testing, which takes advantage of the fact that all living things incorporate Carbon 14 when they are alive, scientists were able to determine that the scrolls dated from the centuries between 250 BCE and 68 CE. One of the first things I noticed in the exhibit was the use of the term BCE (before common era) and CE (common era), which correspond to B.C. and A.D., but are terms used by scientists. On the scrolls were mostly words of Hebrew scripture, law and even poetry. Not all of the writing on the scrolls is religious, but the scrolls we viewed were copied from scripts that would one day appear in the Hebrew Bible and included an Apocryphal Psalm, attributed to King Solomon and to David. One scroll we saw was a passage from Genesis and all of the scrolls were copied down before the Hebrew Bible had been set in stone.”