Dead Sea Scrolls on exhibit in San Diego

by ryan | June 27, 2007 at 02:24 pm

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Since their discovery the Dead Sea Scrolls have lived up to their expectation of captivating audiences...audiences of historians that is. The scrolls are heading to California where it is expected that huge crowds will flock to see the artifacts. In the homeland of flash and bang entertainment it's hard to imagine that the exhibit will meet curators' expectations.

The San Diego Natural History Museum expects thousands of visitors willing to pay up to $28 for a brief look at some of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

The scrolls may not look like much - a museum director in 2003 described them as resembling "little pieces of burned paper" - but they have been a subject of fascination and controversy to Jews and Christians since a shepherd found the first ones in 1947 in cave near the Dead Sea.

The six-month San Diego exhibit, which opens Friday, includes 12 scroll fragments from Israel and three from Jordan, The Los Angeles Times reported. The Israeli government plans to switch in mid-exhibit to limit exposure to light.

Each piece is in its own exhibit case with a separate climate-control system. The light in each will turn off for 5 seconds out of every 20, again to limit light exposure.

"We've got to go down and see them," the Rev. John Mann, assistant pastor at Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa, told the Times. "The significance is that these words that were preserved in these manuscripts are the inspired word of God."