JERUSALEM (AP) – Israeli archaeologists on Tuesday announced the discovery of dozens of new fragments of the Dead Sea Scroll with Biblical text found in a desert cave and believed to have been hidden during a Jewish uprising against Rome nearly 1,900 years ago.
The fragments of parchment bear lines of Greek text from the books of Zechariah and Nahum and are dated around the 1st century AD according to the writing style, according to the Israel Antiquities Authority. They are the first new scrolls found in 60 years from archaeological digs in the desert south of Jerusalem.
The Dead Sea Scrolls, a collection of Jewish texts found in desert caves in the West Bank near Qumran in the 1940s and 1950s, date from the 3rd century BC to the 1st century AD. beliefs of a little understood Jewish sect.
The approximately 80 new pieces are believed to belong to a set of parchment fragments found at a site in southern Israel known as the ‘Cave of Horror’ – named after the 40 human skeletons found during excavations over the years. sixty – which also bear a Greek image. rendition of the Twelve Minor Prophets, a book in the Hebrew Bible. The cave is located in a remote gorge about 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Jerusalem.
The artifacts were found during an operation in Israel and the occupied West Bank conducted by the Israel Antiquities Authority to find scrolls and other artifacts to prevent possible looting. Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 war and international law prohibits the removal of cultural assets from occupied territory. The authority held a press conference on Tuesday to reveal the discovery.
The fragments are believed to have been part of a scroll that was stored in the cave during the Bar Kokhba Uprising, an armed Jewish revolt against Rome during the reign of Emperor Hadrian, between AD 132 and 136. Coins struck by rebels and arrowheads found in other caves in the region also date back to that period.
“We have found a textual difference that has no parallel with any other manuscript, either in Hebrew or Greek,” said Oren Ableman, a Dead Sea Scroll researcher with the Israel Antiquities Authority. He was referring to minor variations in the Greek rendering of the Hebrew original as compared to the Septuagint – a translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek made in Egypt in the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC.
“When we think of the biblical text, we think of something very static. It wasn’t static. There are minor differences, and some of those differences are important, ”said Joe Uziel, head of the Antiques Authority’s Dead Sea Scrolls section. “Every little bit of information that we can add, we can understand a little bit better,” how the biblical text came into its traditional Hebrew form.
In addition to the artifacts from the Roman era, the exhibit also featured many older discoveries of no less importance that were found during the clearing of more than 500 caves in the desert: the 6,000-year-old mummified skeleton of a child, an immense fully woven basket from the Neolithic period, estimated to be 10,500 years old, and many other delicate organic materials preserved in the arid climate of caves.
In 1961, Israeli archaeologist Yohanan Aharoni excavated the “Cave of Horror” and his team found nine fragments of parchment belonging to a scroll containing texts of the Twelve Minor Prophets in Greek, and a piece of Greek papyrus.
Since then, no new texts have been found during archaeological digs, but many have turned up on the black market, apparently looted from caves.
For the past four years, Israeli archaeologists have launched a major campaign to search caves nestled in the steep canyons of the Judean Desert in search of scrolls and other rare artifacts. The goal is to find them before looters disrupt the remote sites and destroy archaeological layers and data in search of antiquities heading for the black market.
Until now, the hunt had only found a handful of parchment scraps with no text on it.
Amir Ganor, head of the anti-theft prevention unit, said that virtually no antiquities have been looted in the Judean desert since the operation began in 2017, calling the operation a success.
“For the first time in 70 years, we were able to get ahead of the looters,” he said.