Dead Sea Scrolls Online

Good news for scholars and novices, now they can examine exact copies of the original Dead Sea Scrolls along with an English online translation.  For years scholars complained that these were not accessible for research. Finally the scrolls were published in 36 volumes but they are expensive and difficult to use. Now from the comfort of your laptop you can see them all on your laptop. Most of the 500 scrolls are housed in the Shrine of the Book in Jerusalem where they are kept in climate controlled museum underground.

This project which will be made available through Google is reported to use state of the art photographic technology used by NASA and will provide exceptional images for study and research. This high-tech infrared camera is able to recover even faded areas of the the scrolls.

I have seen the DSS twice, once in Jerusalem and when they were on display in San Diego several years ago. The are the oldest copies we have of the books of the Bible and demonstrate the accuracy of the ancient scribes in copying the originals as demonstrated in the accurate copy of the book of Isaiah. LINK

The photo above is a reproduction of one of the scrolls that I took at the Qumran Museum in 2007.