Wednesday, March 07, 2007

The Dead Sea Scrolls


Yesterday I had the chance to spend the morning with our church staff downtown at an exhibit of the Dead Sea Scrolls. It was in some ways less than what I expected, but in most ways, it was truly awe inspiring. There are over 100,000 fragments of scrolls that were found in the caves of Qumran. Yet, most of them are small pieces and therefore are not impressive in size. However, when you think about the fact that you are seeing a fragment from the Bible that was written over 2.000 years ago, that's really impressive.

One other thing that was way different than I expected was how small the writing on the scroll was. I guess I assumed that because everything was copied by hand, the writting would be a "normal" written size (maybe around a 12 to 14 pt font). Yet, the scrolls had what I would classify as more of a 9 point font with all the intricacy of Hebrew and Aramaic lettering. WOW!

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