Posted: 2/19/2014 5:04:00 PM
Author: Bible Archaelogical History Society Staff
Source: www.biblicalarchaeology.org/.../digital-dead..
Dead Sea Scrolls Online: IAA Expands Digital Library
by Biblical Archaeology Society Staff
Google, Israel Museum Put Dead Sea Scrolls Online
The Israel Antiquities Authority, in collaboration with Google, has launched The Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library, a new website that allows visitors to view and search high-resolution images of the complete Dead Sea Scrolls archive online.
In December 2012, the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), in collaboration with Google, launched The Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library, a website allowing visitors to view and search high-resolution images of the complete Dead Sea Scrolls archive online. In February 2014, the IAA launched a new update to the library, including “10,000 new photographs of unprecedented quality.” The original launch of the project used advanced and innovative technologies available to image the entire collection of about 930 manuscripts, comprising thousands of Dead Sea Scrolls fragments, in high resolution and multiple spectra. According to an IAA news release, the updated site “also offers accompanying explanations pertaining to a variety of manuscripts, such as the book of Exodus written in paleo-Hebrew script, the books of Samuel, the Temple Scroll, Songs of Shabbat Sacrifice, and New Jerusalem” along with “10,000 new multispectral images, improved metadata, additional manuscript descriptions, content pages translated into Russian and German in addition to the current languages, a faster search engine, easy access from the site to the facebook page and to twitter and more.”
The Dead Sea Scrolls have been called the greatest manuscript find of all time. Visit the BAS Dead Sea Scrolls Page for dozens of articles on the scrolls’ significance, discovery and scholarship.
Through this process, thousands of images are now accessible to anyone, anywhere in the world over the web, with many thousands more on the way. Several hundred fragments are already viewable, and it is hoped that transcriptions and translations for many scrolls will soon be available as well. According to a statement by IAA General Director Shuka Dorfman on the project website, the “Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library represents a new milestone in the annals of the story of one of the greatest manuscript finds of all times.”
