A total of 183 artifacts depicting the history of Taoism are to be displayed in a special exhibition at the National Museum of History Dec. 20 to March 29, 2015, in Taipei City.Among these items:
[...]
Another highlight is a collection of the oldest extant bamboo slips quoting Lao Tzu, which date to the Warring States Period (476-221 B.C.). The equivalent for Taoism of the Dead Sea Scrolls to the Hebrew Bible, the slips have never before left mainland China.Sort of. In fact the name Lao Tzu means "Old Man," which may in this context just mean "Wise Philosopher" rather than a proper name, so the work may be anonymous. It would be clearer to say that these manuscripts show that the literary work called "Lao Tzu" (better known as the Tao Te Ching) does indeed go back to the Warring States Period.
“The unearthing of these bamboo slips proves the existence of Lao Tzu the person and his thought,” Wang [Jichao, head of the exhibition department of the Hubei Provincial Museum,] said, explaining the significance of the texts.
Now this has nothing to do with ancient Judaism, except as an interesting parallel discovery in China. I note it mainly because of the comparison with the Dead Sea Scrolls, which, at least in the West, serve as the template for a momentous discovery of ancient manuscripts.
A decade ago I noted and discussed a similar manuscript discovery in China as an example of the Dead Sea Scrolls as cultural icon.
