“Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘Write down these words, for in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel’” (Ex 34:27)
Widely considered to be the greatest archaeological find of the 20th century, the Dead Sea Scrolls contain the oldest known copies of the Hebrew Bible and scrolls describing the life, times and beliefs of the Dead Sea sect. Most scholars believe the sect lived at Qumran, where the scrolls were discovered. The Shrine of the Book at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem is celebrating Israel’s 60th anniversary and the momentous discovery of the Scrolls just one year before, by presenting for the first time in extended public display the Scroll of Isaiah, whose prophecies have become universal bywords for everlasting peace.
The Isaiah Scroll is one of the original seven scrolls discovered in the caves near Qumran above the Dead Sea in 1947. In subsequent years, some 800 manuscripts were found in the region, of which approximately 200 are biblical. The Isaiah Scroll is the largest and best preserved of all the biblical scrolls, and the only one discovered in its entirety: The 54 columns of writing contain all 66 chapters of the book.
This scroll is also one of the oldest manuscripts discovered in Qumran. It dates from about 100 BCE, making it 1,000 years older than the oldest Hebrew biblical manuscript known prior to the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls – the Aleppo Codex. Some 20 additional, but fragmentary, copies of Isaiah were discovered among the Qumran scrolls. The book was the subject of six commentaries, and is frequently quoted in other scrolls.
A facsimile of the Isaiah Scroll has long been the dramatic centerpiece of the Shrine of the Book, in an exhibition hall designed to resemble the tops of the clay jars in which the first scrolls were discovered. One of the most moving moments for visitors is to watch Hebrew-speakers, especially youngsters, approach the scroll and read its immortal words aloud in the original language in which the prophet uttered them. A small fragment of the original Isaiah Scroll is also on display. Now, visitors will be able to see the entire original scroll, some 8.5 feet long and containing the famed words, “they will beat their swords into plowshares” (Isaiah 2:4).
To illustrate Isaiah’s momentous message, iron tools from the eighth century BCE, the period during which the prophet lived, will be shown alongside the scroll. A recently excavated and never-before-displayed Hellenistic seal bearing a dove carrying an olive branch, another biblical and universal symbol of peace, will also be shown. An international research conference will be held July 6-8, 2008, to coincide with the exhibition.
The work of transcribing the precious words of the Bible is considered sacred, and special care is taken to do so as precisely as possible. Thus the Shrine of the Book, which displays the ancient scrolls, is aptly named. One of the most exciting exhibits, modestly displayed on the lower floor of the hall, is the Aleppo Codex, written in the tenth century in Tiberias. Until the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, it was the oldest known biblical text; called the Masoretic (“transmitted”), it is considered the “authorized” version on which all Jewish Bibles are now based.
The codex was kept for a time in Jerusalem, removed at the time of the Crusades and restored to the Jewish community in Egypt, where the great sage Maimonides (1135-1204) for the writing of Torah scrolls. Eventually it was taken to Aleppo, in Syria, presumably by a grandson of Maimonides, and preserved in the synagogue there. In 1947, immediately following the United Nations decision to partition Palestine, Aleppo’s synagogue was destroyed, and the sacred book was believed lost. In 1957, a Syrian Jew who came to live in Israel, Mordechai Faham, smuggled the manuscript out of Syria wrapped in burlap inside an old washing machine. He presented it to Itzhak Ben-Zvi, Israel’s second president and a scholar of Middle Eastern Jewish communities, and it was entrusted to the Ben-Zvi Institute.
About one third of the manuscript is missing. Once believed to have been burned, it is now thought that at least some of the pages are held by individuals around the world. In December 2007, a small fragment of Exodus 8 including the words of Moses to Pharaoh ("Let my people go, that they may serve me...") was presented to the Ben-Zvi Institute by the descendants of a Syrian-American Jew, Sam Sabbagh.. He had immigrated to the United States and held on to it for as long as he lived, believing it had saved him from the riots in Aleppo and various other disasters.
In honor of last year’s 60th anniversary of the scrolls’ discovery, the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), the custodian of the scrolls, which maintains a laboratory dedicated solely to their conservation, convened a conference on the urgent matter of their preservation. The IAA called on experts from the Italian Ministry of Culture to seek solutions to unresolved issues, such as releasing fragments that are still encased in the original glass plates in which they were placed in the 1950s when the research on them first began.
The exhibit, “A Day at Qumran,” continues to reveal the secrets of the Dead Sea sect that lived at the site where the scrolls were uncovered. Meanwhile, at the Israel Museum’s newly opened Dorot Foundation Dead Sea Scrolls Information and Study Center, an imaginative audiovisual presentation dramatizes the complexities of life in Second Temple times. Together with the adjacent 21,500 square-foot scale model of the Second Temple, depicting Jerusalem as it was around the time of Jesus, these elements become companion pieces illuminating a pivotal period of history and Scripture.
www.israelmuseum.org.
