More on the St. Paul DSS exhibition

THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS EXHIBITION upcoming in the Science Museum of Minnesota is getting a lot of attention. This Star Tribune article has some newish background:

The Israel Antiquities Authority will actually swap out the five-scroll set twice because the artifacts are so sensitive and fragile. They don't want to display them longer than 10 weeks at a time.

Negotiating to secure the scrolls' 13th U.S. visit and 21st trip out of Israel has been a seven-year odyssey for Science Museum staff, featuring a $750,000 conservation fee, a cave-exploring trip along the Dead Sea's northwestern coast and construction of the most sophisticated display cases in the museum's 103-year history. There was even a pivotal 2006 wining-and-dining session of Israel's directors of artifacts and treasures that began at the Mall of America and ended up at a Target store on St. Paul's East Side (more on that later).

There are lots more interesting details about the mechanics of the exhibition, but the article never gets back to the Target store.

Note the scroll photo to the right. It's of a manuscript of Genesis that I edited in DJD 12.

UPDATE: And here's a Twincities.com article that gives a précis of the theories about the origins of the scrolls.