Bible and archaeology news
In the week since the Israel Museum and Google began posting high-resolution images of the Dead Sea Scrolls online, more than a million people from across the world have stopped to browse the digital versions of the ancient documents. According to Google, the Israel Museum Web site featuring the scrolls has received 1,042,104 visitors since last Monday. More than 400,000 logged on from the United States and, somewhat surprisingly, the site received several hundred visitors each from Arab and Muslim states like Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey. The site, which currently includes images of five of the most complete scrolls housed in the Israel Museum’s Shrine of the Book, will expand in coming months to include pictures of other scrolls in the collection of the Israel Antiquities Authority.
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It’s an important theological and historical document. Now people don’t have to wait years to see it in their local museum, they just can see it online. But I still think that visiting the origins of this document is very important, you get a different vibe in the holy land. The Dead Sea area is beautiful and definitively worth visiting.