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Archaeology & History

One more Dead Sea Scroll has been deciphered

By T.K. Randall
January 23, 2018 · Comment icon 6 comments

The scrolls were discovered within the Qumran Caves. Image Credit: Effi Schweizer
One of the last two untranslated Dead Sea Scrolls has finally been pieced together by archaeologists.
Considered to be some of the most significant ancient texts ever discovered, the Dead Sea Scrolls are comprised of several hundred documents dating back more than 2,000 years. They were found inside eleven caves in the eastern Judaean Desert between 1946 and 1956.

Now researchers at the University of Haifa in Israel have managed to decipher one of the last remaining untranslated scrolls by reassembling the manuscript from 60 separate fragments.
Dr. Eshbal Ratson likened it to "putting together a jigsaw puzzle without knowing the picture."

The newly-translated scroll provides unique insight in to the lives of the people who wrote it and the 364-day calendar that they used. The manuscript also mentions special celebrations known as 'Tekufah' - a term that refers to a shift in seasons and is the Hebrew word for 'period'.

"Once you get a few full sentences you, you can guess all the rest of it," said Dr Ratson. "If you think of a puzzle, when we started, we didn't have the picture, but after a while we knew what to expect, so knew how to put the pieces together."

Source: National Geographic | Comments (6)




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Recent comments on this story
Comment icon #1 Posted by Dark_Grey 6 years ago
A unique calendar? No allusions to Christianity originally being a mushroom cult, as per John Marco Allegro's Dead Sea Scroll translations? I mean, there's nothing weird at all about the architecture at the Vatican, like mushroom cap fountains or a giant pine cone statue...   
Comment icon #2 Posted by Uncle Sam 6 years ago
Still waiting for the page "This is a work of fiction" to be translated.
Comment icon #3 Posted by pallidin 6 years ago
The translation is not "etheric" It relates only to the celebration of 3 harvest times. Specifically that of wheat, olive oil, and I forget the third.
Comment icon #4 Posted by paperdyer 6 years ago
I have a friend that, many years ago, took exception when I said the Bible was basically a history book.  Sounds like I wasn't off the mark. I read an article about the Psalms.  In one of the Psalms, there's a reference about drinking the nectar from his woman's navel.  The author of the article explained that the word for navel and the area a few inches below were the difference of 1 letter. Navel was a two letter word and the other area was a three letter word with the third letter added at the end.
Comment icon #5 Posted by hetrodoxly 6 years ago
That would be the 'Song of Solomon' it probably is her navel as it goes on to praise her belly, the male part in the story is God the female part is Israel, ie it's God praising Israel, it's in the Tora.
Comment icon #6 Posted by UFOwatcher 6 years ago
What if the guy hiding these slipped in one that he made up as a joke?


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