Dead Sea Scrolls

As the sign said "2,000 years in the desert, 100 days in Charlotte." So Dan and I drove this last weekend to Charlotte to see them. It was a very cool exhibit. We spent about 3 hours walking through the whole thing. Yes we read everything! Dan would've been done much faster but I'm a slow reader. It was FANTASTIC! I was amazed by two things in particular when looking at the scrolls. One the scribes have A LOT of talent to write so accurately, consistently, detailed, and SMALL with a reed! I don't think I could write anything like that even with a modern pen and paper let alone a hollow reed on parchment. The text size is very small! I always imagined it bigger. They had very good vision to read the scrolls without magnification.

The second thing hit me when looking at the fourth display of scroll. It was of a part of genesis and is the best preserved piece. The bottom of the scroll is a bit degraded but the top is perfect. I was standing there leaning over the glass case examining how they wrote God's name differently then the rest of the text. It suddenly really hit home that 2,000 years ago another person stood over the same piece of parchment doing the exact same thing. There a very few things surviving today that has been around that long! Especially animal skin with writing on it. Their existence is really rather random and bizarre. They have even done some DNA testing on the parchment. If they come any where near you I would recommend driving to see them.