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Title: Digital imaging brings biblical text to light
Source:
Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette
URL Source: http://www.nwaonline.com/news/2016/ ... cal-text-to/?features-religion
Published: Oct 1, 2016
Author: Nicholas Wade
Post Date: 2016-10-03 16:57:38 by redleghunter
Ping List: *Archeology and Digs* Subscribe to *Archeology and Digs*
Keywords: None
Views: 1899
Comments: 10
Nearly half a century ago, archaeologists found a charred ancient scroll in the ark of a synagogue on the western shore of the Dead Sea. The lump of carbonized parchment could not be opened or read. Its curators did nothing but conserve it, hoping that new technology might one day emerge to make the scroll legible. Just such a technology has been perfected by computer scientists at the University of Kentucky. Working with biblical scholars in Jerusalem, they have used a computer to unfurl a digital image of the scroll. It turns out to hold a fragment identical to the Masoretic text of the Hebrew Bible and, at nearly 2,000 years old, is the earliest instance of the text. The writing retrieved by the computer from the digital image of the unopened scroll is amazingly clear and legible, in contrast to the scroll's blackened and beaten-up exterior. "Never in our wildest dreams did we think anything would come of it," said Pnina Shor, the head of the Dead Sea Scrolls Project at the Israel Antiquities Authority. The scroll's content, the first two chapters of the Book of Leviticus, has consonants -- early Hebrew texts didn't specify vowels -- that are identical to those of the Masoretic text, the authoritative version of the Hebrew Bible and the one often used as the basis for translations of the Old Testament in Protestant Bibles. Poster Comment: 
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#1. To: All, *Bible Study Ping* (#0)
#2. To: redleghunter (#1)
red, thanks for posting. This is really fascinating !
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