Review - The Dead Sea Scrolls Exhibit

For the mostly desert Holy Land, Jerusalem is actually a bit mild in terms of weather and heat. But if you travel eastwards, the fertile area in and around Jerusalem quickly becomes desert land, and the high altitude of this, the most famous and important of all of the nation's' cities, at 760 meters (just about half a mile) above sea level, suddenly drops off very quickly to the place with the lowest altitude on Earth, at 423 meters (1,388ft) below sea level. This is the Dead Sea. The drop off comes dramatically with steep cliffs, and it is within just a few of the thousands of caves situated on this cliff at the site of Qumran, a mostly forgotten town with an ancient bit of history, that was about to make this site world famous.

As seems to happen often in history, it happened mostly by accident. It was getting to be late on that January afternoon in 1947, and darkness was going to fall quickly. A local beduin began to scale some of the cliffs, going after some of his goats that had strayed a little too far and a little too high. He happened onto the mouth of one of the many cliffs, and threw a rock into it. He was surprised to hear the sound of pottery breaking, and he told the two other men that he was with about it. It was getting too late to really investigate that afternoon, so the men agreed to inspect it further first thing in the morning.

They, like all of us, had their imagination, and this had led to hopes that a treasure of gold and precious metals would soon be theirs, by chance. So imagine their disappointment when they found written documents instead. This was not exactly what any of the men had in mind. Little did they know, however, that these particular documents were unlike anything that had ever been discovered before, and would prove far more valuable than any gold coins or other precious metals. They had unwittingly stumbled, almost literally, into what would shortly be described as "the greatest archaelogical discovery" of the 20^th century at least, if not perhaps even throughout history. Such are the ironies of history.

Nor do such ironies revolving around these sacred scrolls end there. It is interesting to note that this discovery came at the time that the state of Israel was coming into being, and the government wanted these scrolls, and in a relatively secret mission, they sent an agent of their, a Professor Harry Orlinsky, posing as a "Mr. Green" in order to conceal the involvement and interest of the emerging Jewish state of Israel, which bought the documents for the sum of $250,000. He also contributed towards verifying the authenticity of the scrolls. The Dead Sea Scrolls soon were so validated, and on the very same day, as it happens, that the United Nations granted that Israel should become the controversial Jewish state that we know it to be now. It is not hard to imagine that this (irony?) was taken as a sign by some. Perhaps the most important discovery in history, and most assuredly in Biblical history, just happens to be proven on the very day when the Jews got back the ancient country that had once been theirs, Israel.

Now, all of this wheeling and dealing and secrecy, as well as the painstaking process of trying to verify the authenticity of the documents, makes it all sound very complex and intriguing. It is arachaelogy, and surely, that means that it would have to be more serious than popular notions of the field, such as the depictions of the famed fictional archaelogist, Indiana Jones, right?

Well, maybe. But then again, in the process of putting these ancient scrolls together, the handlers proved less than professional, to say the least. They handled these documents all too often with cigarettes dangling from their mouths, and even pieced the pieces together with that highly complex modern invention known as – you guessed it – scotch tape. That's right. A priceless find of thousands of years was mishandled with nary a thought about the possible damages.

Some of the Dead Sea scrolls are Biblical, which is to say, they instantly became the oldest known copies of at least parts of the Bible. Yet, quite a few of the scrolls were not in the Bible. Some of them are rules and psalms. Still some are more specific to certain groups, some of whom we had no knowledge of prior to the discovery of the scrolls. Quite a few of them dealt with the future, an apocalyptic vision of the final battle and the ultimate triumph of good, or God, versus evil.

The documents themselves are tiny – far tinier than I imagined. Most of them could fit in a modern day wallet, and the writing is very, very tiny. You can examine them quite closely, and still not really clearly see them. Yet, it is a thrill when you can make out some of the symbols, or even when you can make out an entire word, such as "God" (they give you the symbols to look for).

It certainly was a fascinating display, and a privilege indeed to see such ancient and historical documents. To boot, since I personally saw them just a couple of days after Christmas, seeing the significance of such historically significant documents to the Christian and Jewish religions, made it a little extra special, although I am admittedly far from being the most religious person around. It is history, and the documents are only on display for a few weeks, although they will not go far in the immediate future, going on display in Philadelphia, before returning home – apparently possibly to stay, since it apparently has been determined that having them travel was doing no good, and perhaps even they were sustaining some considerable damage.

So, unless you are planning to take a trip to the Mideast in the immediate future, you might want to hurry up and see the scrolls, if such things interest you and you are willing. They won't be here too long!