New Discovery of Dead Sea Biblical Fragments - More to Come?

[smac97]

Here:

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On a day that saw the Israel Antiquities Authority unveil the first Bible scroll fragments found in decades and numerous other dazzling artifacts from the “Cave of Horror” above the Dead Sea  — including a huge 10,500-year-old complete woven basket, the oldest in the world — perhaps the most extraordinary news is that there are another 20 promising caves, holding untold potential treasures, that have yet to be excavated.

That means the dozens of fragments shown to the public on Tuesday could mark the beginning of an exciting new era of discovery, 60 years after the last major scroll finds.
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Dr. Ofer Sion, 60, led a team into the well-named “Cave of Horror,” some 80 meters below the cliff face, where some 40 skeletons of Bar Kochba rebels were discovered during earlier excavations in the 1950s and early 1960s led by Yochanan Aharoni.
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In the 1950s, explained Sion, Aharoni excavated according to the practices of the time, with the technology of the era. During the new team’s three weeks in the cave, much of what they did was uncover “overlooked” items — scroll fragments, coins, and even a mummified child from 6,000 years ago.

Sion said that the discovery of some 80 scroll fragments — some of them so tiny that they barely have letters attached — was possible only thanks to the tedious work of dry sifting the earth Aharoni left behind.

“This is a once in a 100 years find,” he said of the latest scroll fragments. And it almost didn’t happen at all. Only the sharp eyes of the archaeobotanist on the team, accustomed to seeing minuscule seeds and pollen, discerned the letters amidst the dust.

“You’ve got dust everywhere, in your glasses, in your face, and the scroll fragments are the color of stone. Only the archaeobotanist saw the tiny words. It was amazing,” he said.

Subsequently, said Sion, the two members of the team tasked with manning the metal detectors — technology unavailable to Aharoni, who thus overlooked a cache of Bar Kochba coins — came up to him with a handful of something folded, what “looked like garbage” at first glance, he said. They had turned up the first of several clumps of scroll fragments.

“We archaeologists, we’re a little crazy,” said Sion. Every day he’d gamely rappelled down to the cave and climbed his way back up. “When I had the scroll fragments in my bag, I went up in about a minute.”

 

More information here: https://www.jpost.com/archaeology/israel-finds-2000-yr-old-biblical-manuscripts-662148

Very cool!  I look forward to further developments.

Thanks,

-Smac

[Tacenda]

24 minutes ago, smac97 said:

Here:

More information here: https://www.jpost.com/archaeology/israel-finds-2000-yr-old-biblical-manuscripts-662148

Very cool!  I look forward to further developments.

Thanks,

-Smac

Not to be a negative nelly, but what if these were planted as well, like the fake dead sea scrolls?

[smac97]

4 minutes ago, Tacenda said:

Not to be a negative nelly, but what if these were planted as well, like the fake dead sea scrolls?

We'll find out, I suppose.  From the second link in the OP:

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The cave, known as “the Cave of Horror” in the Judean Desert reserve’s Nahal Hever, stands some 80 meters below the clifftop and can be accessed only by clinging to ropes.

Thanks,

-Smac

[Robert F. Smith]

29 minutes ago, smac97 said:

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it almost didn’t happen at all. Only the sharp eyes of the archaeobotanist on the team, accustomed to seeing minuscule seeds and pollen, discerned the letters amidst the dust.

“You’ve got dust everywhere, in your glasses, in your face, and the scroll fragments are the color of stone. Only the archaeobotanist saw the tiny words. It was amazing,” he said.

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The most difficult course I ever took at UCLA was paleoethnobotany.  Everything was so small.  We had to sift everything.  Had to use the electron microscope to see pollen.  Amazing to find that discipline being used to find letters in scroll fragments.

[Robert F. Smith]

3 minutes ago, smac97 said:

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The cave, known as “the Cave of Horror” in the Judean Desert reserve’s Nahal Hever, stands some 80 meters below the clifftop and can be accessed only by clinging to ropes.

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The caves in Nahal Hever are well-known, but very remote.  Was a good place to escape from the Romans.  The scroll fragments can be securely dated by C14 and paleography.  That's how previous scrolls from that area were dated.  They are not fakes.  An interesting example is Nahal Hever Letter 44, one of the Bar Kochba letters, which contains the name of Yehuda ben Alma -- Nibley took special note of that one: see Nibley’s review of Y. Yadin, Bar-Kochba, in BYU Studies, 14/1 (1973):121.

See also The Documents from the Bar‑Kokhba Period in the Cave of Letters. Hebrew, Aramaic and Nabatean‑Aramaic Papyri, eds., Yigael Yadin, Jonas C. Greenfield, Ada Yardeni, and Baruch Levine (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society/ Hebrew Univ. Institute of Archaeology/Shrine of the Book/Israel Museum, 2002), 47 = Dead Sea Discoveries, 10/2 (Brill, 2003).

[Robert F. Smith]

https://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/.premium-israel-finds-new-dead-sea-scroll-first-such-discovery-in-60-years-1.9621317

[Calm]

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/daring-rescue-mission-dead-sea-scroll-finds-other-rare-discoveries

[The Nehor]

Fingers crossed for the Book of Zenock.