Over 70 years after they first mystify archaeologists , some of the last remaining unread fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls have been decipher .
A yr of fiddly work by scholars from theUniversity of Haifain Israel has reassembled and deciphered 60 tiny fragment of the script , some modest than a centimetre in size , that was write in a mysterious code . analytic thinking of the mystic papers has also bring out the ancient traditions and fete of an early Jewish religious sect , as well as the writing of a 2d scribe who was correcting the mistake made by a premature author .
“ The scroll is indite in computer code , but its actual content is dewy-eyed and well - known , and there was no reason to conceal it . This practice is also found in many station outside the Land of Israel , where leaders publish in secret code even when discussing universally - known matters , as a reflexion of their status , ” the researchers explain in astatement .
“ The custom was intended to show that the writer was familiar with the computer code , while others were not . However , this present scroll evince that the author made a routine of mistakes . ” It was the annotations in the margins by this second scrivener that helped them decipher it .
The Dead Sea Scrollswere first discovered in the 1940s and 1950s in a series of 12 remote caves , known as the Qumran Caves , near the Dead Sea in the West Bank . Consisting of over 900 scrolls made of papyrus , animate being skin , and copper , the texts document the tradition , stories , and notion of an other Judean Desert sectcalled the Essenesover 2,000 years ago .
But what ’s the big business deal about these scrolls anyway ? Well , away from sound like something out of anIndiana Jonesmovie , the scrolls are one of the oldest go transcript of the Hebrew Bible , dating to around 4th C BCE . Analysis of the scrolls has already project light onto the history of Judaism and Christianity . It ’s also deepened our understanding of the Bible since they are the closest thing to the scriptural text edition ’s original embodiment .
Another one of the chief discoveries from this late workplace is that this ancient sect conform to an strange 364 - day calendar .
“ The lunar calendar , which Judaism follows to this day , requires a large number of human conclusion . mass must look at the principal and moon and account on their observations , and someone must be empowered to decide on the young month and the program of leap days ” added the researchers .
" By contrast , the 364 - day calendar was staring . Because this issue can be divided into four and seven , extra occasions always descend on the same day . This avoids the need to decide , for model , what happens when a special function decrease on the Sabbath , as often happen in the lunar calendar . "
