The Dead Sea Scrolls are some of the most
famous Christian documents in the world and they are the oldest known
biblical manuscripts in existence. The scrolls have a storied history
that saw them stashed away inside a series of caves on the shores of the
Dead Sea to protect them for the Roman armies that were invading the
Holy Land in 68 BCE. The scrolls were lost until 1947 when a shepherd
tossed a rock into the cave and discovered the scrolls.
The scrolls have been on exhibit since 1965 at the Shrine of the Book
at The Israel museum in Jerusalem. Google has announced that it has now
made the Dead Sea Scrolls available online and has digitized all of the
content in the scrolls and made that content searchable online. The
images of the scroll are high resolution at up to 1200MP to allow the
user to see everything about the scrolls.
Google says that you can zoom in on the Temple Scroll and see what
the animal skin that the text is written on looks like. The Great Isaiah
Scroll can be read chapter and verse. The Hebrew text is also
translated into English when clicked. The scrolls went online via a
partnership between Google and The Israel Museum, Jerusalem.