Wednesday, April 22, 2026

New scrolls coming to Museum of the Bible DSS exhibit

EXHIBITION ROTATION: Museum of the Bible prepares to receive Dead Sea Scrolls Isaiah fragments (Elizabeth Black, The Sift).
An ancient fragment of the book of Isaiah will go on display at the Museum of the Bible from May through September before returning to Israel to spend five years in a vault. The leather fragment is part of the Dead Sea Scrolls, discovered in the 1940s and 50s in the caves of Qumran in the West Bank, or what the Israeli government refers to as Judea. It contains portions of several chapters of Isaiah and dates back to sometime around the first century A.D. The Isaiah fragment is part of the final stage of a Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit at the museum, according to Bobby Duke, the museum’s chief curatorial officer.

... The new display will also include other Dead Sea Scrolls fragments, including an apocryphal account of the birth of Noah, part of the ancient Jewish book of Tobit, and Duke’s favorite item: pieces of phylactery scrolls.

This is the third lot of scrolls in this exhibition. That Isaiah fragment mentioned is 4QIsaiahd (4Q58). For details on the other scrolls in this rotation, follow the "exhibit" link to the museum page and scroll (heh) down.

Earlier posts on this exhibition are here (cf. here) and here.

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