Haran

In case anyone is interested, I thought I'd mention that there is an exhibition at the Dallas Biblical Arts Museum for those who happen to live here or nearby. It is called the Dead Sea Scrolls to the Forbidden Book - A History of the Bible.

I went there today to see it. Personally, I think the price ($21 - discounted to $17 today for some reason) was rather high for what the exhibit actually contained, but there were some things there that many might never have the chance to see again. Just don't expect too much. It is Dallas after all.

It starts with an intersting little documentary (with some viewpoints that many here would disagree with). There were some ancient clay tablets, cylinders, and seals in cuneifom, very tiny pieces of the Dead Sea Scrolls, larger pieces of Septuagint (LXX) and NT, and several old Bibles (from a martyr's handwritten NT from around 1410, to a leaf from a Guttenberg Bible, to a 1516 edition of Erasmus famous Greek/Latin NT, to a Tyndale, Martin Luther Reformation German Bible, "Matthew's" Bible, Coverdale Bible, Geneva Bible, Bishop Bible, Reina Spanish Bible, Douai Rheims, 1611 King James, first Bible printed in English in America - which was apparently endorsed by the US congress, to a lunar Bible on Microfilm - was taken to the moon.

I make no claims to complete accuracy on the above and I think a few of them were reproductions but many were the genuine thing.

I found it interesting. I'm not sure it was really worth the money, but I had to see it anyway. I felt kind of rushed but I was able to go back through some of the exhibits because we were the last tour of the day at 3:30pm.

One thing that really annoyed me is that they did not give the numbers for the manuscripts, so there was no way for me to go looking afterwards to see what it was that I had seen exactly.

If anyone does go, be sure to look closely at the DSS of the Commentary on Genesis which reads "God to Abraham...Isaac his son..." Underneath the actual piece of small and charred looking scroll is an enhanced picture. It is upside down... If you stand on your head, it's really quite clear and ledgible... People thought I was a little strange though... (ok, maybe I only twisted my head a little bit...) I thought about saying something to them, but I figured they wouldn't believe me or wouldn't do anything about it even if they did believe me.

Happy hunting if you go and I hope it is not a big disappointment. Let me know if you recognize the upside-down picture!

Peter Kirby

Why do they call it "the Forbidden Book"?

best,
Peter Kirby

B. H. Manners

You can't look in it to see how contradictory it is.

Toto

It looks like you can get discounted tickets from this website:

http://www.deadseaexhibit.com/

(at least - I got a popup box offering me tickets for $4.)

Steven Carr

'Other rare items include several 5,000-year-old pictographic clay tablets from ancient Mesopotamia, the earliest form of writing in history, and a 2,600-year-old scroll containing the oldest known Hebrew writing and the earliest known written example of the Hebrew name for God, Elohim.'

I always thought the oldest example was an amulet containing something from the Torah.

What is this scroll?

Isn't the Hebrew name for God, YHWH?

Javaman

Someone posted here some time ago (yet I can't find it) a learned-sounding answer to the origin of YHWH. IIRC, it would never be pronounced yah-whey and there were unwriteable (?) 'letters' in the word as well. I'd like to know the origin better but I wouldn't recommend this thread on the origin of YHWH although, at first glance, it looks promising.
Edited 'cause I confuse "Origen" with "origin"

Haran

Because men (like William Tyndale) were put to death for putting the Bible into their own languages. Some of these "forbidden" books are the ones on display.

Haran

Man! I wish I had looked for the website before going... Oh well...

When you click on that link, the DSS manuscript on the right with the black background is the one whose picture was upside down in the display for those who may go (watch them fix it now that I've said that...).

Haran

Yes, but he was also referred to as Elohim. This fragment is supposedly (I'm not sure about the claim) the "first recorded example of the name Elohim" as the name of the Judeo-Christian God.

Again, I haven't seen any numbers associated with the MSS, so it will be hard to go look them up in DJD or elsewhere.

Haran

Here are some hi and lo res pictures of the exhibits from the website Toto provided (including the full hi-res image of the Elohim fragment):

http://www.deadseaexhibit.com/press_graphics.cfm

I particularly found the letter from Thomas Jefferson interesting:

"...it proves there is a god in heaven, and that he will not slumber without end on the iniquities of tyrants, or would-be tyrants, as their Stadtholder."

http://www.deadseaexhibit.com/downlo..._Letter-hi.jpg

It ain't easy to read...so:
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/jefferson/181.html

Maybe that would be better in the political forum though...