Archeological Biblical Breakthroughs

[waltky]

Now they can read scrolls too fragile to be opened...

Scanning software deciphers unopened Biblical scroll
Fri, Sep 23, 2016 - The charred lump of a 2,000-year-old scroll sat in an Israeli archeologist’s storeroom for decades, too brittle to open. Now, new imaging technology has revealed what was written inside: The earliest evidence of a Biblical text in its standardized form.

The passages from the Book of Leviticus offer the first physical evidence of what has long been believed: that the version of the Hebrew Bible used today goes back at least 2,000 years, academics say. The discovery, announced in a Science Advances journal article by researchers in Kentucky and Jerusalem on Wednesday, was made using “virtual unwrapping,” a 3D digital analysis of an X-ray scan. Researchers say it is the first time they have been able to read the text of an ancient scroll without having to physically open it. “You can’t imagine the joy in the lab,” said Pnina Shor of the Israel Antiquities Authority, who participated in the study.

The digital technology, funded by Google and the US National Science Foundation, is slated to be released to the public as open-source software by the end of next year. Researchers hope to use the technology to peek inside other ancient documents too fragile to unwrap, like some of the Dead Sea Scrolls and papyrus scrolls carbonized in the Mt Vesuvius eruption in 79 AD. Researchers say the technology could also be applied to the fields of forensics, intelligence and antiquities conservation. The Biblical scroll examined in the study was discovered by archeologists in 1970 at Ein Gedi, the site of an ancient Jewish community near the Dead Sea. Inside the ancient synagogue’s ark, archeologists found lumps of scroll fragments.

The synagogue was destroyed in an ancient fire, charring the scrolls. The dry climate of the area kept them preserved, but when archeologists touched them, the scrolls would begin to disintegrate. So the charred logs were shelved for nearly half a century, with no one knowing what was written inside. Last year, Yosef Porath, the archeologist who excavated at Ein Gedi in 1970, walked into the Israel Antiquities Authority’s Dead Sea Scrolls preservation lab in Jerusalem with boxes of the charcoal chunks. The lab has been creating high-resolution images of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the earliest copies of Biblical texts ever discovered, and he asked researchers to scan the burned scrolls. “I looked at him and said: ‘you must be joking,’” said Shor, who heads the lab.

She agreed, and a number of burned scrolls were scanned using X-ray-based micro-computed tomography, a 3D version of the CT scans hospitals use to create images of internal body parts. The images were sent to William Brent Seales, a researcher in the computer science department at the University of Kentucky. Only one of the scrolls could be deciphered. Using the “virtual unwrapping” technology, he and his team painstakingly captured the three-dimensional shape of the scroll’s layers, using a digital triangulated surface mesh to make a virtual rendering of the parts they suspected contained text. They then searched for pixels that could signify ink made with a dense material like iron or lead. The researchers then used computer modeling to virtually flatten the scroll, to be able to read a few columns of text inside. “Not only were you seeing writing, but it was readable,” Seales said. “At that point we were absolutely jubilant.”

MORE

 

[PurpleOwl]

lol and its the book of leviticus the most evil crazy book in the whole bible, remember to murder your children if they talk back, or wear clothes made of two different fabrics, as god says you should

 

[alang1216]

the Dead Sea Scrolls, the earliest copies of Biblical texts ever discovered...

I think people tend to forget that the Bible was an oral tradition for centuries and, like the game telephone demonstrates, changed with each retelling. Most changes were minor ones that didn't affect the meaning but some changes were likely additions from other traditions or omissions of text that didn't "fit" with the tellers personal code. Knowing this it has always amazed me that anyone can say the Bible is the literal word of God. The NT is no different and there is much evidence for changes to that text over the centuries before the printing press standardized books.