JERUSALEM (AP) – Israeli archaeologists on Tuesday announced the discovery of dozens of new Dead Sea Scroll fragments with a 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 the parchment contain lines of the Greek text from the books of Zechariah and Nahum and were dated according to the writing style according to the Israeli Antiquities Authority around the 1st century AD. These are the first new scrolls found in archeological excavations in the desert south of Jerusalem in 60 years.
The Dead Sea Scrolls, a collection of Jewish texts found in desert caves in the West Bank near Qumran in the 1940s and 1950s, dates from the 3rd century BC to the 1st century AD. It contains the earliest copies of biblical texts and documents showing the beliefs of a somewhat understandable Jewish sect.
The approximately 80 new pieces presumably belong to a set of parchment fragments 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 also contains a Greek. version of the Twelve Little Prophets, a book in the Hebrew Bible. The cave is located in a remote gorge about 40 kilometers south of Jerusalem.
The artifacts were found during an operation in Israel and the occupied West Bank carried out by the Israeli Antiquities Authority to find scrolls and other artifacts to prevent possible looting. Israel conquered the West Bank in the 1967 war, and international law prohibits the removal of cultural property from the occupied territory. Authorities held a news conference on Tuesday to unveil the discovery.
The fragments were presumably part of a scroll hidden in the cave during the Bar Kochba uprising, an armed Jewish uprising against Rome during the reign of Emperor Hadrian, between 132 and 136 AD. Coins struck by rebels and arrowheads found in other caves in the region also date from that period.
“We found a textual difference that does not match any other manuscript, either in Hebrew or in Greek,” said Oren Ableman, a researcher on the Dead Sea Scrolls at the Israel Antiquities Authority. He referred to small differences in the Greek version of the Hebrew original 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 was not static. There are slight differences and some of these differences are important, ”said Joe Uziel, head of the ancient government’s Dead Sea Scrolls unit. ‘Every little bit of information we can add, we can understand a little better’ how the biblical text came in its traditional Hebrew form.
In addition to the artifacts from Roman times, the exhibition included much older discoveries of no less importance found during the livestock of more than 500 caves in the desert: the 6000-year-old mummified skeleton of a child, a large, complete woven basket from the Neolithic period, estimated to be 10,500 years old, and numerous other delicate organic materials preserved in the arid climate of caves.
In 1961, the Israeli archaeologist Yohanan Aharoni excavated the “Cave of Horrors” and his team found nine parchment fragments that were part of a scroll with texts from the Twelve Little Prophets in Greek, and a piece of Greek papyrus.
Since then, no new texts have been found during archaeological excavations, 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 located in the foothills of the Judean Desert through scrolls and other rare artifacts. The goal is to find it before looters disturb the remote sites and destroy archaeological layers and data in search of antiquities going to the black market.
So far, the hunt has found only a handful of parchment remains that contain no text.
Amir Ganor, head of the antiquities theft prevention unit, said that since the start of the operation in 2017, virtually no antiquities have been looted in the Judean desert, calling the operation a success.
“For the first time in 70 years, we were able to outrun the looters,” he said.