Games brings Dead Sea Scrolls to Australia

Adapted from a 7.30 Report story by Philippa Quinn which aired on July 13.

In 1947, Bedouin shepherds discovered seven scrolls of ancient manuscript in a cave on the shores of the Dead Sea.

Dating from the third century BC, the Dead Sea scrolls have become the world's most controversial archaeological treasure.

For 40 years, only seven scholars had access to them.

But since 1991, there has been a worldwide effort to translate them and study their relevance to the foundations of Judaism and Christianity.

Now, as part of the Olympic cultural festival, a collection of 12 fragments of the scrolls have arrived in Australia - only the third time they have left Israel since their discovery.

Professor Laurence Schiffman says their arrival offers Australians a chance to glimpse history.

	It's a massive undertaking to bring the scrolls over since they're priceless, 2000 years old and very, very delicate

"When you speak about history, here you have coming at you 100,000, 80,000 fragments across history, across two millennia," Professor Schiffman says.

"Texts that you have never seen, have never held, have never been able to see and read, and now you have them telling you about the beliefs of people who are our forefathers from 2,000 years ago.

"This is really a miracle. This is a tremendous opportunity," he says.

Since their discovery 53 years ago at an ancient settlement called Qumran, the Dead Sea scrolls have yielded what some scholars believe to be the foundation of Judaism and Christianity.

The scrolls have only left Israel twice since 1947 but, as part of the Olympic cultural festival, they have arrived in Australia amid tight security.

The Israel Antiquities Authority’s Pnina Shor says transporting the scrolls is a huge logistical task.

"It's a massive undertaking to bring the scrolls over since they're priceless, 2,000 years old and very, very delicate," Ms Shor says.

The 12 fragments going on display at the New South Wales Art Gallery were transported in specially built cases.

"We did it in, this time, in three transports and, of course, they're hand-carried all the way," she says.

"We don't leave them for a second until they are brought here to the safe."

The scrolls must be kept at a constant humidity and temperature, replicating the conditions of the cave in which they were discovered.

"What's best for the scrolls is to lie in the darkness," Ms Shor says.

"We realise it is a world heritage and the importance of it being exhibited."

While the scrolls themselves are an archaeological treasure, it's the information they contain that has made them the source of intense controversy.

But Professor Emmanuel Tov, the editor in chief of the Dead Sea Scrolls, says you will not find the answers to Jesus’s life in them.

"Ever since the scrolls were found, they captured the public mind, but they were written at a time when Christianity came about," Professor Tov says.

"At first, people were looking for Jesus himself. Well, Jesus is not in the scrolls."

Professor Tov, who has studied the scrolls for more than 35 years, says those looking for prophesies will be disappointed.

"The scrolls are Jewish scrolls, they're not Christian scrolls," he says.

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"They are scrolls that portray the literature of that time. They are fragments of the Hebrew Bible, the so-called Old Testament.

"And the remainder are all kinds of literary compositions," he says.

Professor Schiffman says the scrolls have been surrounded by a sort of mythology.

"People think somehow or another that the scrolls are going to tell us the true secret of when the Messiah is going to come," Professor Schiffman says.

"And, of course, this is all nonsense because the scrolls have nothing to do with this. They're a bunch of religious teachings.

"The Book of Revelation also understands the end of days as coming about amid a kind of catastrophe, a conflagration, in which all evildoers will be destroyed.

"And in this respect, it does have parallels with the war scroll," he says.

Because the scrolls were kept from all but a select few, Professor Schiffman believes early interpretations were flawed, and this led to some outlandish myths.

"The whole myth of the Vatican trying to keep the scrolls secret is a basically a complete falsehood," he says.

"In fact, the Vatican's only involvement in the scrolls was that they contributed a little bit of money - I think it was $10,000 - towards the Jordanian attempt to purchase the scrolls."

Professor Tov says the secrecy surrounding the scrolls in the early days led to some outlandish tales.

"The scrolls remain very interesting for the public mind, so when 10 years ago, when the scrolls were so much in the news, American tabloids would have major news on the front page: ‘Elvis Presley in the Dead Sea Scrolls’, ‘Atlantis in the Dead Sea Scrolls’, ‘The Answer for AIDS in the Dead Sea Scrolls’," he says.

Nearly all of the scrolls have been published and are available on CD-ROM in several languages.

However, the painstaking process of piecing together thousands of fragments continues.

And Professor Tov says some mysteries will never be solved

"Will we ever know all the truth that can be known about the scrolls? The answer, course, is no. Because there will remain many open questions," he says.

But Professor Schiffman says they have contributed directly to healing the rift between Judaism and Christianity.

"One of the positive aspects of the scrolls' fallout has been that people have come to realise that Christianity in its origins is so Jewish, much more Jewish than they ever realised," he says.

"All this together has allowed the scrolls to contribute in a very, very positive way to Jewish-Christian relations for us today."

The scrolls will be on display in Sydney until October and in Melbourne next year.