

Dead Sea Scrolls Now Available Online - mootothemax
http://dss.collections.imj.org.il/project

======
ErrantX
It confuses me somewhat how they can claim copyright over documents that are
thousands of years old :S

<http://dss.collections.imj.org.il/terms_pg>

 _Copyright in the digital images of the manuscripts, created by the Israel
Museum and displayed on this site, is held by the Israel Museum. Reproducing
these digital images in any manner other than for research or private study
requires prior permission or licensing._

The Wikipedia crowd are (rightly) griping about this; we've long held that
faithful digital reproductions of 2D copyrighted work simply inherit the
copyright of the original. It's sad to see such a nice thing marred by a silly
approach to copyright.

As if they are scared people are going to, what, misuse the material and make
a fortune out of it?

~~~
NolF
It's how copyright works unfortunately :( The creator of the content/picture
own that picture unless they state it otherwise. Considering the nature of the
document, it should be considered of public domain due to the broad public
interest the document has.

~~~
ErrantX
Not necessarily. In the US, for example, this is not true (and this is the
only place I know of it being tested in court). It was ruled that faithful
reproductions of 2D works lacked _originality_ (even if they required work to
produce) and so PD work does not become copyrightable :)

See:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgeman_Art_Library_v._Corel_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgeman_Art_Library_v._Corel_Corp).

So in the US, certainly, I doubt this is copyrightable.

------
lotharbot
Other online Bible manuscript projects I'm aware of:

<http://www.aleppocodex.org/> \- complete Hebrew Bible (Old Testament), dating
from about 930 AD

<http://codexsinaiticus.org/en/> \- Greek Bible (includes complete New
Testament)

<http://www.greek-language.com/Manuscripts.html> \- links to a ton of Greek
Bible manuscripts

It's unfortunate there isn't a better clearinghouse for this. There's a
tremendous wealth of data out there.

~~~
blendergasket
<http://www.gnosis.org/naghamm/nhlcodex.html> \- The Nag Hammadi Codex.
Gnostic scriptures, some of which are of the Gnostic Christian varieties that
were circulating around the time of Jesus and after. These offer a fascinating
counterpoint to the officialized, hierarchical Christian dogma the ideas of
the time were honed into.

~~~
lotharbot
Gnostic and other "non-canonical" writings are also of interest.
www.earlychristianwritings.com/ is another quite fascinating source, with lots
of letters and such. (Neither site seems to have manuscript scans,
unfortunately.)

I would love to see a good source on the "circulating around the time of
Jesus" claim. I've never been able to track down anything credible on that
front.

<http://www.gnosis.org/naghamm/Pagels-Gnostic-Gospels.html> notes the existing
manuscripts date to 350-400, that "some" must date to somewhat prior to 180 AD
because Irenaeus speaks of "other gospels", and cites a Harvard professor who
speculates that the Gospel of Thomas " _may_ include some traditions even
older" than the official gospels. Those are fairly weak claims; do you have
support for your stronger claim?

~~~
photophotoplasm
_> I would love to see a good source on the "circulating around the time of
Jesus" claim. I've never been able to track down anything credible on that
front._

Me too. The earliest writings I know of are Paul's letters and possibly the
Didache, and neither of them were written until a couple of decades after
Jesus' ministry.

~~~
TheRevoltingX
I thought Mark was written around 40 years after Jesus.

~~~
tesmar
Mark was written about AD 50, so about ~16 ish years after Jesus.

~~~
olavk
I believe the general consensus is that Mark were written around AD 70, making
it closer to 40 years after Jesus.

~~~
lotharbot
There's some disagreement. Some date Mark to around 50 AD; others to between
65 and 72 AD.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Testament#Dates_of_composit...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Testament#Dates_of_composition)

------
Sabaqa2011
Definitely still worth seeing in person if you can. Many people are unaware
they were written by an estranged puritanical sect of the ancient Israelites
that were not accepted by the mainstream community, which is why the scrolls
were found in Qumran, and not Jerusalem.

Another important related issue is that the Dead Sea is losing one meter of
water/year and will shrivel to the size of a small lake in 50 years if we do
nothing.

[http://www.time.com/time/video/player/0,32068,71715312001_20...](http://www.time.com/time/video/player/0,32068,71715312001_2016083,00.html)

------
scottmp10
Created in partnership with Google:

[http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/09/from-desert-to-web-
br...](http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/09/from-desert-to-web-bringing-
dead-sea.html)

------
jackfoxy
I hope this will be a model for all archaeological literature. It’s a real
shame how controlling scholars sit on caches of the world’s cultural heritage
not for years, not for decades, but for generations (in the case of the
Oxyrhynchus papyri), dolling it out to the public only as they reconstruct and
interpret the fragments. If humanities scholars aim to rise to the level of
the hard sciences, let them emulate XArchive.

~~~
jackfoxy
I should have called it _literature archaeology_.

------
joshu
no spoilers for those of us that haven't read them.

------
TheRevoltingX
Pretty neat, I'm most interested in Daniel.

Prior to the dead sea scrolls people would speculate the prophecies in Daniel
were written after the fact.

The carbon dating in the dead sea scrolls seemed to prove otherwise.

------
wslh
What's interesting to study is the difference between the dead sea scrolls and
the "current" or canonical version of the old testament. See more on
<http://www.bibleandscience.com/archaeology/dss.htm> and
[http://orion.mscc.huji.ac.il/symposiums/1st/papers/Anderson9...](http://orion.mscc.huji.ac.il/symposiums/1st/papers/Anderson96.html)

Think that Judaism, Christianism and Islamism, and a big part of world culture
are based or influenced on that.

------
bdz
Archive.org also digitalizing old Bibles. And you can download them too! For
example: <http://www.archive.org/details/novumtestamentum00eras>

------
teilo
The DSS have been online for a while now, and this is only a few of the
scrolls. However, it is very nicely done, and clearly the best online edition
of these particular scrolls.

------
prawn
Clever implementation. Pay attention when browsing the Isaiah scroll to how
the rolled up ends of the scroll change in size as you scroll it left to
right.

------
blendergasket
Does this make seeing the real dead sea scrolls more or less impressive I
wonder?

------
jfb
OK, I'm no Google fan (far from it), but this is pretty goddamn cool.

~~~
natch
Not really that cool, when you see how they've ensured it will be available
only as long as the web site and the institutional support continues.

If there was a download link for the whole thing, documents and UI+backend
source, now _that_ would be cool.

------
sgarrity
It’s about time.

------
robchez
as an aside, for a great book discussing the evolution of the current bible,
you should read Misquoting Jesus by Bart D. Ehram

~~~
lotharbot
Ehrman's book mixes fact with a great deal of speculation. I would not
recommend it as a starting place.

For a more factual treatment, I'd recommend starting with the wikipedia
article on "textual criticism" (the process of reconstructing documents from
imperfect copies). Its section on the New Testament has a list of the major
textual problems, most of which have their own wikipedia articles.

If you want to get into books, David Alan Black wrote a fairly nice
introduction to New Testament textual criticism. Bruce Metzger and Kurt
Aland's books are both pretty widely respected as well. If you want to see the
changes passage-by-passage during study, consider using the NET Bible
(net.bible.org) and watching for notes marked "tc".

