Hidden text on the manuscript 'Dead Sea Bible'

The text hidden on the debris of the 'Dead Sea Bible' manuscript is now readable, revealing many interesting things never known.

These newly found contents come from Deuteronomy and Leviticus in the Hebrew Scriptures (or the Old Testament in Christianity) and the Jubilees - written texts are almost at the same time as the Hebrew Scriptures but were never included in the Bible . The discovery also helped solve the controversy surrounding the scroll of the sacred temple (sacred Temple Scroll) - the longest in the manuscript, archaeologists said.

The research group of the Israeli Antiquities Agency (IAA) presented these findings at the 70th international conference of the Dead Sea Bible Draft: opening the road in the wild '(The Dead Sea Scrolls at Seventy: Clear a Path in the Wilderness).

During the 1940s and 1950s, archaeologists and native Bedouin discovered the Bible script in caves near the East Coast of Qumran, not far from the northern edge of the Dead Sea.

During subsequent excavations, tens of thousands of other pieces of scrap paper dating back to about 2000 years were also discovered. Many of them were so small and fragile that archaeologists had to keep one box in common for future research. And now, that moment has come when the IAA is working to digitize the manuscript to learn and share with the public without damaging the original. The discovery of hidden texts came from the use of infrared rays to analyze artifacts - according to the IAA's announcement on May 1.

Israeli scientists are trying to match the pieces of the Dead Sea Bible Manuscript.(Photo: Israel Antiquities Agency (IAA)).

When performing a digital scan, Oren Ableman, a researcher specializing in draft sets at the IAA and a doctoral student at the Jewish History Department, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, found that there were strange points on many of the fragments found. see at Hang No 11 near Qumran. If you look with the naked eye, these pieces of paper look white, but when viewed with infrared light, Oren Ableman finds that there are characters and words in Hebrew written on it. He then proceeded to decode the words and join the debris with the manuscript at the location where they seemed to be there before being torn off.

A debris from Deuteronomy (on the right) and the words seen after using infrared.(Photo: IAA).

Here are some interesting messages from hidden text on pieces of paper:

- One piece may come from the scroll of the sacred ancient temple, on which there is a record of how to conduct the rituals here. For a long time, scholars have argued that there are two or three copies of the Book Scroll found in Hang Number 11. And these new documents are found to indicate that there are three copies in fact.

- Another piece comes from the Psalm Scroll, which includes the first part of Psalm 147: 1 and the last suffering of the poem - which is recorded in a larger piece and both are found in the same cave. These contents show that the ancient Psalm seems a bit shorter than the still-used Hebrew version today.

- Another piece is written in ancient Hebrew script and may belong to another text that has never been known.

The fragment from the Psalm, containing the content of Psalm 147: 1.(Photo: IAA).