Review: The Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library
While I have often read about the Dead Sea Scrolls and referenced them in my work, I did not know the detailed history of the scrolls. Fortunately, Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) — the current holder of the scrolls — has created The Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library to share these artifacts, explain how the scrolls were written, and give a timeline for how they came into the IAA collection. Google assisted in the creation of the website, which is available in English, Modern Hebrew, German, Russian, and Arabic, allowing a wide range of people to study the scrolls. The website contains images of the scrolls themselves, along with opportunity to “Learn about the Scrolls” and “About the Project” of digitization.
Featured Scrolls
While all scrolls found during “the greatest archaeological event of the twentieth century” (although the website might be biased) are highly important to the understanding of life in Ancient Israel, some scrolls contain more or better information than others. Fragments containing Genesis 1:1-2, the 10 Commandments, and seven Psalms “not found in the standard Masoretic version of the Bible” are highlighted in this section. For non-biblical texts, secular works by a group calling itself “Yahad”, meaning “Community”, describe the daily life and beliefs of its people. This group may have been part of the Essenes, a Judean political faction, although scholars are divided on this.
Archaeologists also discovered works that did not make the cut when canonizing the Bible:
- Book of Enoch: The great-grandfather of Noah “fallen angels… [who] cohabit with the daughters of men”.
- Aramaic Apocryphon of Daniel: Messianic prophecy with similar phrases to those found in the Gospels.
- The Book of War: An “apocalyptic 40-year battle between the forces of good and evil”.
Explore the Archive
The archive is built similarly to many other open access academic archives and is intuitive for researchers. Users can browse by archaeological site, language of the text, or content of the text, in addition to a keyword search. The repository contains canned images from the 1950s through the present with varying image quality. I imagine that older images will be updated as the scanning project progresses. Each image has its own comments section, often with intense academic commentary. I am excited to see how this portion of the website progresses as the project continues.
Learn about the Scrolls
For me, this was the most interesting section of the website. The “Introduction” explained that the eleven caves of Qumran is the most favorite site, as it was the first place where scrolls were discovered. The caves contained a wide range of texts like documents “over a thousand years older than previously identified biblical manuscripts”, parts of the Pseudepigrapha, and other works previously believed to be lost. The “Historical Background” gave an overview of the cultural in which the scrolls were written, a time of political and religious turmoil between the 2nd century BC to the 2nd century AD. Judean society was not monolithic as the people divided into the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes to debate over the meaning of the Law. The Greek and Roman Empires colonized the region except for a brief hundred years of independence under the rule of high priests and Hasmonean kings.
Following up this overview was the “Historical Timeline” delineating the periods by which the scrolls are defined. The First Temple Period lasted from 960 to 586 BC, ending with the destruction of the First Temple and the Babylonian Exile. Copies of biblical texts composed then are the oldest known. After the return from exile was the Second Temple Period, lasting from 529 BC to AD 70 with the destruction of the Second Temple by the Roman Empire. During this time, Judea was ruled by the empires of Persia, Greece, and Rome. Most of the scrolls at Qumran date from the Hellenistic Period started by the conquests of Alexander the Great, along with the Herodian Period during the rule of the Roman Empire. Some manuscripts date from the Post Second Temple Period, with Latin texts from Roman soldiers found at Masada dating after AD 73, Arabic manuscripts from the Early Islamic Period found at Khirbet Mird, and a Greek Christian prayer dating from the Crusader Period of the 12th and 13th century found at Wadi Murabba'at.
The story of the “Discovery and Publication” of the scrolls is as famous as the scrolls themselves. A Bedouin shepherd from the Ta'amireh tribe, either Jum'a or Muhammed ed-Dib, claimed to have found the scrolls in 1947 after throwing stones into a cave and hearing the sound of broken pots. They sold the scrolls to local antiques dealers, who in turn sold four of them to Syrian Archbishop Samuel. The next year, Hebrew University professor Eliezer Lipa Sukenik bought three scrolls. Samuel smuggled his four scrolls to New Jersey and later sold them to Yigael Yadin, the son of Sukenik, in 1954 via a Wall Street Journal advertisement, a classic example of how not to treat ancient artifacts. Yadin brought to these to Hebrew University to join the three others belonging to the State of Israel. Meanwhile, Bedouins excavated thousands of scroll fragments within ten additional caves, and scholars monopolized these fragments, not allowing the general public to see them. During the 1990s, the IAA worked on its first publication project, which they completed in 2001.
“Discovery Sites” listed the eleven Qumran caves, Bar Kokhba Revolt Refuge Caves in Wadi Murabba'at, Nahal Hever Caves, and Masada. Two Nahal Hever Caves have their own names. At “Cave of Letters”, archaeologists discovered correspondences with exact dates, while at “Cave of Horror”, they found the skeletal remains of forty refugees. Masada is a UNESCO World Heritage Site marking the last Judean revolt after the destruction of the Second Temple. A fragment of Virgil’s Aeneid found at the site showed the emotional state of Roman soldiers required to guard the site after the Jewish rebels martyred themselves, translated on the website as “Anna, sister, how my dreams terrify me and leave me hanging!”. This was interesting to me as a modern reader, as it suggests the popularity of the book was similar to the popularity of modern movies or television shows, and we still use quotes as shorthand to express difficult concepts.
The “Scrolls Content” section described manuscripts with unusual edits. Some documents had palimpsest where the original work was erased so new writing could be used on the same parchment. Opposite sides of a scrolls sometimes contained completely different texts. Genres of text included calendars, commentaries, prophecy, sapiential or words of wisdom, legal documents, and a manuscript with the epic title “The Scroll of the War of the Sons of Light Against the Sons of Darkness”. These scrolls were written in a wide range of languages: three different Hebrew scripts, four dialects of Aramaic, koine Greek, Latin, and Arabic.
The “Conservation” of the scrolls widely varied in quality as the transfer from the dark dry caves near sea level to the higher elevation raised rick of deterioration. In the 1950s, conservators tried to prevent this by affixing scroll fragments to window glass using tape. During the 1960s and 1970s, the British Museum became involved (surprise!), and attempts to fix the fragments caused further damage. After the IAA completed the inventory of the Dead Sea Scroll fragments in 1989, the organization partnered with Getty Conservation Institute (a branch of Getty Images, which last appeared on the blog during my review of Growing Up Getty) in 1991 to find “decades’ worth of damage”. The current digital preservation project began in 2007, as scientists used infrared imaging to detect illegible letters on the documents. Today, the scrolls reside in a climate-controlled system set to the same conditions as the caves. Occasionally, scrolls are exhibited around the world at famous archives like the United States Library of Congress.
About the Project
This section included “A Note from the IAA Director”, which reviewed the information found across the website and included a four-minute video summarizing the project with special focus on the photography and imaging system. Voiceover was provided by a man with an American accent with all interviews conducted in English and burned-in English subtitles. This video appeared on all language versions of the website, not just English. Another page in the section described “The IAA” established in 1990 to operate “operates in accordance with the Law of Antiquities (1978) and the Antiquities Authority Law (1989)”. Further background on the technology used while creating “The Digital Library” included a short YouTube video demonstrating spectral imaging by no sound and a brief explanation on how images captured using MegaVision technology would eventually include metadata like transcriptions, translations, and a bibliography.
The project is super clear about its funders, dedicating the page “The Leon Levy and Acadia Funds” to the Leon Levy Foundation, a non-profit founded in 2004, and the Acadia Fund, which works to “protect endangered culture and nature” with organizations like Harvard University, UCLA, National Library of Israel, and The Hill Foundation, along with IAA. Finally, the website has a “Credits” page to list all current workers, including the conservators and scientific teams, along with earlier database managers, photographers, graphic artists, video editors, web designer, and the advisory committee.
Accessibility Statement
This page lets users know that “The website was developed according to the W3C guidelines to reach the level of AA accessibility” and provides a contact email for people who cannot access the site. The body font size was initially to small for me, as it was set at 16px, the equivalent to 12pt. While this is the ideal size for an academic paper, the text was too small for me to read on my computer screen. I easily enlarged the page to 150% using my browser zoom, and the website was still properly formatted.
Conclusion
This was a fascinating look at some of the best known literary artifacts. The content was comprehensive and organized without being overwhelming. Plenty of images interspersed with main text and side panels kept the page visually interesting. Despite an occasional minor spelling or translation error, the content was readable and engaging. Sometimes, the archives were not accessible in the Chrome browser; clicking on a filter or entering a keyword search revealed a blank page, and the page would not refresh in the browser. This issue did not exist in the Edge browser. Overall, I enjoyed learning more about the Dead Sea Scrolls and hope to use the library in my future research.
Abby Epplett’s Rating System
Experience: 8/10
Accessibility: 8/10