America
Biblical text deciphered from 1,500 year old scroll
New York, July 26
Scientists have for the
first time been able to read Biblical verses from a badly burned scroll
that is at least 1,500 years old.
To date, this is the most
ancient scroll from the five books of the Hebrew Bible to be found since
the Dead Sea scrolls, most of which are ascribed to the end of the
Second Temple period (first century BCE-first century CE).
The
parchment scroll was unearthed in 1970 in archaeological excavations in
the synagogue at Ein Gedi but it had been so badly burnt it could not be
deciphered.
Now, high-resolution scanning and University of
Kentucky professor Brent Seales' revolutionary virtual unwrapping tool
revealed verses from the beginning of the Book of Leviticus suddenly
coming back to life.
The rare find was presented at a press
conference in Jerusalem earlier this week, attended by Israel's Minister
of Culture and Sports M.K. Miri Regev and director of the Israel
Antiquities Authority, Israel Hasson.
Seales, who attended the
event via Skype, said in a statement: "The text revealed from the Ein
Gedi scroll was possible only because of the collaboration of many
different people and technologies."
"The last step of virtual
unwrapping, done at the University of Kentucky through the hard work of a
team of talented students, is especially satisfying because it has
produced readable, identifiable, biblical text from a scroll thought to
be beyond rescue," he added.
It turned out that part of the
scroll is from the beginning of the Book of Leviticus, written in Hebrew
and dated to the late sixth century C.E.
The results come from
research and a software prototype designed to do "virtual unwrapping" of
surfaces from within volumetric scans.
This unwrapping process allows the visualisation of evidence of writing on a surface from within a scanned volume.
"I
have been using the word 'surface' to refer to the page of biblical
text we have revealed. But this is a term of geometry, not of precise
position," Seales said.
"The page actually comes from a layer
buried deep within the many wraps of the scroll body, and is possible to
view it only through the remarkable results of our software, which
implements the research idea of 'virtual unwrapping'," he explained.
The
discovery has been met with great surprise and excitement as the first
eight verses of the Book of Leviticus suddenly became legible.
This
is the first time in any archaeological excavation that a Torah scroll
was found in a synagogue, particularly inside a Holy Ark.