Google made headlines last year when it digitized five Dead Sea Scrolls manuscripts and made them available online. Now, it’s making 5,000 more available.
Together with the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), Google will partner in launching the Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library, “an online collection of some 5,000 images of scroll fragments, at a quality never seen before,” according to Google.
The Daily Telegraph reports that approximately 4,000 fragments already have been uploaded to the website. CNN profiles one of the archivists here.
When the collection is finished, Google says, the texts will include “one of the earliest known copies of the Book of Deuteronomy, which includes the Ten Commandments; part of Chapter 1 of the Book of Genesis, which describes the creation of the world; and hundreds more 2,000-year-old texts, shedding light on the time when Jesus lived and preached, and on the history of Judaism.”
But Google and IAA are not the only ones digitizing the Ten Commandments: Cambridge University has announced that the Nash Papyrus, another of the oldest copies of the Ten Commandments, will be available online through the Cambridge Digital Library.
CT’s previous reporting on the Dead Sea Scrolls includes a series, “War of the Scrolls,” that examined how evangelical scholars use the scrolls to demonstrate scriptural reliability.
