The Dead Sea Scrolls visit New York

Slightly related to our trip to Israel -- a piece of Israel has come to visit us here...  The Dead Sea Scrolls are now on display at New York's Discovery Times Square museum.  See the link at http://www.discoverytsx.com/exhibitions/dead-sea-scrolls.

The dead sea scrolls were discovered in caves surrounding the Dead Sea from 1947 to 1956, and are the oldest, best-preserved parchment scrolls of the bible.  I had the opportunity to visit the exhibity while a section of the scrolls containing the ten commandments was being shown - for a 2 week period only - during the last 2 weeks of December 2011.  This particular scroll of the ten commandments dates to between 50 BCE and 1 BCE (Before the Common Era).

I had seen PBS broadcasts about the dead sea scrolls before, and I was expecting to see many fragments and missing pieces, extrapolated lettering.  So, I was pleasantly surprised to see how intact many of the scrolls were.  And, the section with the ten commandments was exceptional and extremely well preserved.  The writng was so small though, I could not make out many of the words.  Definitely hebrew though.  The size of the parchment was only about 6 inches wide, with the text contained in about 12 lines per column.  And the section containing the ten commandments appeared in three center columns of a 5 column piece:

There was also a zoomed description and translation on the wall nearby the display.  In another area, there was  a very interesting description of how Jews, Catholics, and Protestants view the ten commandments, which I was not aware of.  The "10" are a slightly different ten for each religious group, depending on different interpretations of the wording of the "commandments" text.  Not a huge difference, as there are about 7-8 that are common to all - but a few are interpreted differently!

If you are interested in trying to get in to see this exhbit before it is gone in April, I'd advise going straight to the end of the exhibit first, where you will need to get in a long sprialing waiting line to see the dead sea scrolls, which could take a while to work your way through.  I have to admit that after spending about 2 1/2 hours visiting the front displays of the exhibit - we did not want to wait in this long line! and so we only caught glimpses of the spralled out scrolls  (The seperate line for the ten commandments scroll was much shorter...  so we waited to see that scroll up close instead).

Then I would suggest coming back through the front half of the exhibit to see the rest - because, there was a lot of very interesting things to see there as well.  For example, also on display was an actual 3 ton stone brought from near the Western Wall, along with a live feed from the Wall in Jerusalem...  Many pottery containers, large and small, some with royal imprints, artifacts, and small art engravings.  Also, an interesting timeline of different empires throughout history who have controlled the land of Israel.  And, you can even see a old bathtub!  (An ancient Mikvah maybe ??)

The exhibit is on display in partnership with the Israel Antiquities Authority.  And it should be there through April 2012.