(MENAFN) One of two previously unread manuscripts of the Dead Sea Scrolls has been deciphered by an Israeli scholar, who has pieced together the Scrolls after more than half a century since their discovery, an Israeli university has said.
A Haifa University spokesman told AFP on Sunday that more than 60 tiny fragments of parchment bearing encrypted Hebrew writing had previously been thought to come from a variety of different scrolls.
But Eshbal Ratson and Jonathan Ben-Dov of the university's Bible studies department figured that the pieces all fit together after they started examining them just under a year ago, Ilan Yavelberg said.
"They put it all together and said it was actually one scroll," he said.
Many experts believe the manuscripts of the Dead Sea, numbering around 900, were written by the Essenes, a dissident Jewish sect that had retreated into the Judaean desert around Qumran and its caves, they were discovered between 1947 and 1956 in the Qumran caves above the Dead Sea.
The Dead Sea Scrolls, dated from the 3rd century BC to the 1st century AD, include the oldest known manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible, contain Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic writing and hold the oldest surviving copy of the Ten Commandments.
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