Most Significant of the Dead Sea Scrolls on Display for Israel's 60th Birthday
"We are celebrating the 60th anniversary of the State of Israel and by chance or not, also the 60th anniversary of the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. We thought that the best way to honor the State of Israel is to bring back these major treasures of the Jewish nation for the celebration of the 60th anniversary of the country."
(Jerusalem, Israel)—Undoubtedly the greatest discovery in history; the Dead Sea Scrolls are extremely important, and significant to both Jews and Christians, as they provide the oldest evidence for the Bible we read today.
Many of us have known that for some time.
What I didn't realize is the miraculous timing of their discovery over half a century ago. A recent CBN report sheds some remarkable light on that. You see, for 2,000 years the scrolls lay hidden among 11 caves deep in the Judean wilderness, in an area called Qumran. (Photo: CBN News)
It was a Bedouin boy who stumbled upon the first scroll. That was just over 60 years ago. There was another very historic and exceedingly significant event which also happened just over 60 years in the past.
Israel declared its independence and officially became a State in May of 1948.
In the CBN piece, Adolfo Roitman, a curator of the Dead Sea Scrolls, talked about the amazing timing of both momentous happenings.
"It's hard to overstate the amazing coincidence that the massive scrolls were discovered around the same time, in the same months, that the State of Israel was proclaimed and was founded here in the land again.
"I think a strong case could be made for anyone of faith that this is a tremendous act of God—to make this available to people at the same time that the State of Israel, as a people, has actually been restored. And I'm not sure and we don't want to overstate the rather amazing [timing]," noted Roitman in the article.
Now, as Israel celebrates its 60th birthday, the curators at the Israel Museum have reportedly put on display what is considered to be the most important of all the Dead Sea Scrolls—the original scroll of Isaiah. It is the first time since 1967.
To read more of this interesting article by Chris Mitchell, follow the source link provided.
Mitchell concludes with this striking thought:
"Two thousand years ago, the Isaiah scroll and many others were hidden in the caves near Qumran. Two thousand years later, the scrolls still speak to us."
