JERUSALEM (AP) – Israeli archaeologists announced Tuesday the discovery of dozens of new fragments of Dead Sea Scrolls containing a biblical text found in a desert cave and believed to be hidden during a Jewish uprising against Rome nearly 1,900 years ago.
The parchment fragments bear lines of Greek text from the books of Zechariah and Naum and were dated with radiocarbon in the second century AD, according to the Israel Antiquities Authority. They are the first new scrolls found in archaeological excavations in the desert south of Jerusalem in the last 60 years.
The new pieces are believed to belong to a set of parchment fragments found at a site known as the “Cave of Horror” – named after the 40 human skeletons found there during excavations in the 1960s – which also bear a Greek interpretation of the Twelve Minors. The prophets. The cave is located in a remote canyon in the Judean desert, south of Jerusalem.
The fragments are believed to have been hidden in a cave during the Bar Kochba revolt, an armed Jewish uprising against Rome during the reign of Emperor Hadrian between 132 and 136 AD.
The artifacts were found during an operation by the Israeli Antiquities Authority in the Jewish desert to find scrolls and other artifacts to prevent possible robberies. The authority is holding a press conference on Tuesday to unveil the discovery.
The Dead Sea Scrolls, a collection of Jewish texts found in the desert caves of the West Bank near Qumran in the 1940s and 1950s, date back to the 3rd century BC. until the first century AD They include the first known copies of biblical texts and documents describing the beliefs of a poorly understood Jewish sect.