Museum Junkie: Royal Ontario Museum hosts Dead Sea Scrolls

by Sean McLachlan on

Visitors to the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto this summer will have a chance to see the famous Dead Sea Scrolls.

“Dead Sea Scrolls: Words that Changed the World” will showcase some scrolls that have never before been seen by the general public as well as numerous artifacts from the period. There will also be a series of lectures by leading religious and secular scholars.

The scrolls, found in caves near the Dead Sea, date from about 150 BC to 70 AD. and include all the books of what is now known as the Old Testament. Many are close to later versions of the same books of the Bible, but there are a few surprises as well. The collection of scrolls includes some previously unknown psalms as well as numerous Apocryphal books that were never incorporated into the standard version of the Bible. Some of the more accepted books, such as Exodus, are quite different from later versions. Controversy has raged over the scrolls since their first discovery, but one thing they do prove is that there were several different variations of the Old Testament until the books became canonized in about 100 AD.

In an interesting article in HalogenLife, Dr. Risa Levitt Kohn, the curator of the exhibit, said that the scrolls concern themselves with philosophical issues that we still wrestle with today.

The show starts June 27 and runs six months.

Dead Sea Scrolls make Journey to San Diego

by Neil Woodburn on

It’s a rare opportunity when one of the world’s greatest treasures leaves home and comes to visit you. It’s even rarer when that treasure is the Dead Sea Scrolls.

The Dead Sea Scrolls are comprised of nearly 800 documents hand written on dried animal skin that were hidden in caves near the Dead Sea (naturally) and discovered between 1947 and 1956. The manuscripts date back to 250 B.C. to 65 A.D. and are the oldest known copies of the bible.

To view such historical manuscripts, one must normally travel to Jerusalem where they are stored. Starting the end of this month on June 29, however, history lovers need only trek down to the San Diego Natural History Museum where 24 of the parchments will be on display until December 31.

Wow, that sure is a lot easier for me than visting the Shrine of the Book in Isreal where they are normally displayed.