
Dead Sea Scroll fragments thought to be blank reveal text - Hooke
https://www.manchester.ac.uk/discover/news/dead-sea-scroll-fragments-thought-to-be-blank-reveal-text/
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hackissimo123
My initial thought upon reading the title: 'what the hell is "blank reveal
text"?'

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throwaway_pdp09
Near me there's some roadworks. There's a sign that says exactly

    
    
      "Narrow Road Don't Overtake Cyclists"
    

but perhaps they meant

    
    
      "Narrow Road Don't Overtake, Cyclists"
    

The comma inverts the meaning. I still don't know which they intended.

~~~
jfengel
A local hospital put up some motivational signs, in crayon. One reads,
"Medical workers: not all heros wear capes". But it's written on three lines
in three different colors, so it reads like "Medical workers: Not All Heroes.
Wear capes!"

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toyg
If you’re ever in Manchester, the John Rylands Library mentioned here is one
of the local jewels and absolutely worth the visit.

If you are a library connoisseur, there are also Chatham’s (one of the oldest
libraries in the land, and likely the oldest dedicated to music), the
Pantheon-inspired Central Library, and the elusive (and exclusive) Portico.
The Law Library was pretty striking too but sadly they moved and the original
building was sold.

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ddoran
This is Manchester, UK, not Manchester, NH nor Manchester, VT.

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haack
I already found it frustratingly ambiguous that there could be more than one
Manchester in the US, then I checked and it turns out there are more than 30

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macintux
I don’t remember any examples off-hand, but we have a few town names in
Indiana which aren’t even unique within the state, because one of the
locations isn’t incorporated.

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gxqoz
Related: The Museum of the Bible in DC recently admitted their "Dead Sea
Scrolls" were forgeries:
[https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/2020/03/museum-
of...](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/2020/03/museum-of-the-bible-
dead-sea-scrolls-forgeries/)

And a longer piece about a forged first-century gospel from the same
institution:
[https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/06/museum-...](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/06/museum-
of-the-bible-obbink-gospel-of-mark/610576/)

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sb057
A very important note a few paragraphs in to the National Geographic article:

>The new findings don’t cast doubt on the 100,000 real Dead Sea Scroll
fragments, most of which lie in the Shrine of the Book, part of the Israel
Museum, Jerusalem. However, the report’s findings raise grave questions about
the “post-2002” Dead Sea Scroll fragments, a group of some 70 snippets of
biblical text that entered the antiquities market in the 2000s. Even before
the new report, some scholars believed that most to all of the post-2002
fragments were modern fakes.

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coldpie
Unrelated but similar article about using X-rays to read text on paper
fragments used during the binding process in the medieval ages:
[https://medievalbooks.nl/2015/12/18/x-rays-expose-a-
hidden-m...](https://medievalbooks.nl/2015/12/18/x-rays-expose-a-hidden-
medieval-library/) The whole MedievalBooks.nl blog is fascinating, lots of
good reading there.

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redtexture
Thank you for that link.

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dgorges
> The Dead Sea Scrolls are ancient Jewish religious manuscripts that were
> found in the Qumran Caves in the Judaean Desert, near Ein Feshkha on the
> northern shore of the Dead Sea in the West Bank. Scholarly consensus dates
> these scrolls from the last three centuries BCE and the first century CE.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Sea_Scrolls](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Sea_Scrolls)

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chrsstrm
I went to a Jesuit university and was required to take a certain number of
credits in religious courses, so I looked over the catalogue and chose the
most interesting and less mainstream options, like classes on Yoga and
Buddhism. One of the classes I chose was about the history of the Old
Testament from an archaeological perspective, which sounded very Indiana Jones
and turned out to be quite interesting. The professor was an archaeologist and
had dug at some of the sites we studied in the course. The only thing I
remember from that class was the story how the Bedouin were shopping the
scrolls before the location of the caves were exposed and the Western
archaeologist (who couldn't immediately travel to the site and wanted to
obtain the scrolls at any cost) offered to pay them per piece. This is very
likely how many of the scrolls were torn into tiny pieces, as Bedouin were
looking to maximize their payout. I didn't find any reference to this in the
linked wiki and I certainly don't know how true the story is (IIRC this story
wasn't in our official class texts either), but it's something to consider
that we could have a more-intact set of scrolls today had it not been for a
terrible decision made in haste.

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koheripbal
It is extremely difficult to do archeology in many countries in the middle-
east, even pre-war.

Turkey, for example refuses most requests for digs. It is generally understood
that they don't want excessive religious historical context placed on their
country as it doesn't mesh well with their current national identity.

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ducktective
Can you elaborate on Turkey being unwilling to conduct historical research on
its soil? Are you an archeologist/historian? I ask because I'm generally
interested in history. I've read speculations that the region called Anatolia
has had a shift in 14th century in language/culture/etc.

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vosper
The second paragraph of the press release reveals what the institution is
actually excited about ;)

> The discovery means that The University of Manchester is the only
> institution in the UK to possess authenticated textual fragments of the Dead
> Sea Scrolls.

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scrozier
Exactly what jumped out at me. Glad to know I'm not the only cynic. :-)

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qwerty456127
What is it?

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qwerty456127
I mean the revealed text - what does it say?

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seemslegit
The text is "This scroll was intentionally left blank"

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rukittenme
I love how most papers start with this contradiction. Really sets the tone.

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dibujante
"This page aspirationally left blank."

