Dead Sea Scrolls Online: IAA Expands Digital Library
Bible and archaeology news
The Israel Antiquities Authority, in collaboration with Google, launched The Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library, a website that allows visitors to view and search high-resolution images of the complete Dead Sea Scrolls archive online. Photo: Shai Halevi, Courtesy of the Israel Antiquities Authority.
In December 2012, the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), in collaboration with Google, launched The Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library, a website allowing visitors to view and search high-resolution images of the complete Dead Sea Scrolls online. In February 2014, the IAA launched a new update to the library, including “10,000 new photographs of unprecedented quality.”
The original launch of the project used advanced and innovative technologies available to image the entire collection of about 930 manuscripts, comprising thousands of Dead Sea Scroll fragments, in high resolution and multiple spectra.
According to an IAA news release, the updated site “also offers accompanying explanations pertaining to a variety of manuscripts, such as the book of Exodus written in paleo-Hebrew script, the books of Samuel, the Temple Scroll, Songs of Shabbat Sacrifice, and New Jerusalem” along with “10,000 new multispectral images, improved metadata, additional manuscript descriptions, content pages translated into Russian and German in addition to the current languages, a faster search engine, easy access from the site to the Facebook page and to Twitter and more.”
Through this process, thousands of images are now accessible to anyone, anywhere in the world over the web, with many thousands more on the way. Several hundred fragments are already viewable, and it is hoped that transcriptions and translations for many scrolls will soon be available as well. According to a statement by IAA General Director Shuka Dorfman on the project website, the “Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library represents a new milestone in the annals of the story of one of the greatest manuscript finds of all times.”
View the digital Dead Sea Scrolls archive.
Visit the Dead Sea Scrolls study page in Bible History Daily for more on this priceless collection of ancient manuscripts.
This Bible History Daily feature was originally published in December 2012.
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Non-Christian translation. Sounds like a good idea, but by someone who truly knows the ancient text idiosyncracies. I’d like to see it too.
Has anyone non-religious ever published a translation of the dead sea scrolls? John Allegro was apparently the only non-christian in the original translation effort and got a totally different translation to everyone else and years quicker, so I worry that my penguin classics copy of the scrolls could be a mis-translation/ crafted from dogmatic bias.
Want to learn the scrolls
Hi,
I could not find the translation in the leon levy website? It said that the content translated into German and Russia in edition to the current language. Can you help me pointing out where are the translation? and if by any chance you know the markup practise of this project?
Thanks
“(IAA), in collaboration with Google” just great. google wants their evil hands on everything. if they have anything to do with it, it will definitely be corrupt.
[…] Source […]
Hello Dead: Have you or anybody else had a chance to read my message about the use of a laser in the conservation of the Scrolls?
[…] Permalink: http://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/digital-dead-sea-scrolls-finally-available-online/ […]
Hello Dead: Thanks for your message. Do you know if lasers were ever considered in the conservation of the Dead Sea Scrolls? Such as, the removal of any soiling from the Scrolls surfaces?
Neil
Nice… post…
Thnks..