Plus a quiz!
Plus this on the Qumran copy now on display in San Diego:
At the Natural History Museum in Balboa Park, the fragmented copy of the commandments is a hit so far. Last Saturday, a near-capacity crowd of 3,900 visitors showed up to see the exhibition after word got out that this piece of Deuteronomy was on display ahead of schedule.For more on the Nash Papyrus, see here.
“This is simply the blockbuster of the exhibition,” said curator Risa Levitt Kohn at the official kickoff Monday.
The Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition began three months ago with the first sampling of biblical texts, religious commentaries and other writings discovered in the Judean desert and dating back roughly 2,000 years. For preservation purposes, 12 scroll fragments on loan from Israel were on display the first three months and then another 12 are being shown these final three months (three on loan from Jordan are here all six months). The exhibition ends Dec. 31.
Included in this second set are fragments from Leviticus, Psalms and Samuel, a commentary on Genesis and an apocalyptic prediction about the coming of a messiah. The Deuteronomy fragment of the Ten Commandments is a long, narrow scrap of parchment that dates back to about 30 B.C.
There is debate as to whether this text is the oldest known copy of the Ten Commandments, with some scholars saying that distinction belongs to the Nash Papyrus fragments acquired in Egypt about a century ago.