2,000-year-old fragments of Dead Sea Scrolls to go on display

2,000-year-old fragments of Dead Sea Scrolls to go on display
By Evelyn Barge Staff Writer
Posted: 03/27/2010 09:32:42 PM PDT

After keeping fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls mostly under wraps for seven months, officials at Azusa Pacific University on Friday invited groups of scholars and local religious leaders to look at the ancient texts.

The 2,000-year-old fragments, tiny pieces of the earliest known text of the Hebrew scriptures, will be part of a public exhibition this spring, along with other rare biblical artifacts.

"It's extremely important that Azusa has these," said James H. Charlesworth, director of the Dead Sea Scrolls Project at Princeton Theological Seminary. "Now, for the first time, scholars will know about them ... and will be able to engage in research on them."

Unearthed between 1947 and 1956 in 11 caves near the ancient settlement of Qumran in Israel, the Dead Sea Scrolls include the oldest version of biblical manuscripts ever discovered.

Azusa Pacific's fragments are believed to have originated from Cave Four in Qumran, said Robert Duke, assistant professor of biblical studies.

Before Azusa Pacific acquired them in August 2009, the text on the privately held fragments had never been published or studied by researchers.

Officials are not revealing how much the university paid to acquire the scroll pieces. One fragment was obtained from a Christian nonprofit based in Phoenix. The others were purchased from Lee Biondi, a rare-manuscripts dealer in Venice.

Two of the fragments contain passages from Deuteronomy,
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one fragment is identified as from Leviticus, and another as the book of Daniel. The fifth fragment, previously thought to be from Exodus, is unidentified.

A fragment of Deuteronomy 27, photographs of which were released to researchers by Azusa Pacific, is already generating scholarly debate about the location where an altar was to be built in ancient Israel.

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