JERUSALEM (AP) – Israeli archaeologists on Tuesday announced the discovery of dozens 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 around the first century based on the style of writing, 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 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. These include the first known copies of biblical texts and documents the beliefs of a poorly understood Jewish sect.
The approximately 80 new pieces are believed to belong to a set of fragments of parchment found at a site in southern Israel known as the “Cave of Horrors” – named after the 40 human skeletons found there during excavations in the 1960s – which he also wears a Greek. rendering of the Twelve Minor Prophets, a book from the Hebrew Bible. The cave is located in a distant canyon, about 40 kilometers south of Jerusalem.
The artifacts were found during an operation in Israel and the occupied West Bank, led by the Israeli Antiquities Authority, to find scrolls and other artifacts to prevent possible robberies. Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 war, and international law prohibits the removal of cultural property 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 hidden in the cave during the Bar Kochba revolt, an armed Jewish uprising against Rome during the reign of Emperor Hadrian between 132 and 136. Coins struck by rebels and arrowheads found in other caves in the region they also come from that period.
“We found a textual difference that bears no parallel to any other manuscript, either in Hebrew or Greek,” said Oren Ableman, a researcher in the Dead Sea at the Israeli Antiquities Authority. He referred to slight variations in the Greek rendering of the Hebrew original compared to the Septuagint — a translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek made in Egypt in the third and second centuries BC.
“When we think of the biblical text, we think of something very static. It wasn’t static. There are small differences, and some of these differences are important, “said Joe Uziel, head of the Dead Sea Antiques Unit. “Every information we can add, we can understand a little better” the way the biblical text came into its traditional Hebrew form.
Along with artifacts from the Roman era, the exhibition included much older discoveries, of lesser importance, found during the sweeping of over 500 caves in the desert: the mummified skeleton of a 6,000-year-old child, a huge basket, full, woven from the Neolithic Period, estimated at 10,500 years, and many other delicate organic materials preserved in the arid climate of the caves.
In 1961, Israeli archaeologist Yohanan Aharoni excavated the “Cave of Horror,” and his team found nine fragments of parchment belonging to a scroll with texts from the Twelve Minor Prophets in Greek and a piece of Greek papyrus.
Since then, no new texts have been found during archeological excavations, but many have appeared on the black market, apparently looted from caves.
For the past four years, Israeli archaeologists have launched a major campaign to collect caves in the precipitous canyons of the Jewish desert in search of scrolls and other rare artifacts. The goal is to find them before the robbers disrupt the remote sites, destroying the archeological layers and the data in search of antiques destined for the black market.
So far the hunt had found only a handful of parchment scraps that bore no text.
Amir Ganor, head of the anti-theft prevention unit, said that since the operation began in 2017, there has been virtually no looting of antiques in the Jewish desert, calling the operation a success.
“For the first time in 70 years, we managed to stop the robbers,” he said.