I had the pleasure yesterday of visiting the Science Museum and seeing the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit, and let me tell you, it's so worth a visit. I'll be writing about it this week for Wander Minnesota, but for a look today, here's a post from the TC Daily Planet.
Dead Sea Scrolls at the Science Museum: Ancient fragments with well-hidden secrets
A photograph displayed in the exhibit shows the early preservation of the scrolls. Photos by Meredith Westin.
What, exactly, are the Dead Sea Scrolls? I posed the question to a few of my friends.
"They
are all kinds of old and depict battles and such. Are they a tapestry?
Wait, I'm totally thinking of something else. Way to make me feel dumb.
What a crappy non-Jewish Jew I am. Sigh."
"Aren't they a collection of ancient documents having to do with the
Bible? I think they are some of the only transcripts of the original
Bible documentation."
"I've heard of them, but I can't recall what they are."
"They
are really old pieces of paper? It has something to do with the Bible.
They were in the paper this morning, but I didn't read the article. I
think there's an exhibit having something to do with them coming to the
Science Museum."
Bingo! The Dead Sea Scrolls: Words That Changed the World
opens Friday at the Science Museum of Minnesota, where it will be on
display through October 24. The exhibit, which is visiting a series of
museums around the world, showcases three sets of five scrolls that
will rotate over the course of the exhibition.
The exhibit designers had their work cut out for them, as Michael
Wise—a Northwestern College professor who consulted on the
exhibit—acknowledged at a Thursday morning press conference. Unless
they specialize in the study of the scrolls, he said, even expert
scholars of antiquity might not really understand the complex story of
the scrolls.
In brief, the Dead Sea Scrolls are indeed a
collection of really old pieces of paper—about 900 of them. Created by
ancient Jews over a span of time from the third century BCE to the
first century CE, they were stowed in a desert cave in the area now
called the West Bank by parties still unknown and remained hidden until
1947, when they were discovered by shepherds. (After bouncing around
the world, they were ultimately purchased by Israel, where they are
currently under the stewardship of the Israel Antiquities Authority.)
The find was one of the great archaeological discoveries of the 20th
century; the scrolls are significant for many reasons, and scholars are
still debating their provenance and implications.
Most
significantly, Wise noted, the scrolls feature passages from the Old
Testament that predate by a thousand years the oldest copies of those
books previously known to exist. "These are real treasures," said Wise,
likening them to the artifacts pursued by Indiana Jones. "They're not
the kind of treasures someone ran from a giant boulder to save, but
they are treasures. To stand before the scrolls is to have an
unmediated encounter with the past."
In the galaxy of
archaeological treasures, the Dead Sea Scrolls are on a par with the
Rosetta Stone and the contents of King Tut's tomb. For that reason
alone, they're worth a trip to see. My advice, though, is to do your
homework before you go—when it comes to understanding the scrolls and
their significance, the exhibit does not hold your hand.
Upon entering the exhibit, the visitor is barraged with wall-size
quotations from scholars debating various aspects of the scrolls: Who
wrote them? Why? How were they stored? What do they mean? It's like
walking into a seminar room when the seminar's already begun, and the
effect is more confusing than exciting.
If you're like my friends and me, you're likely to arrive at the exhibit with some very basic questions: What are
the scrolls? What do they say? Where were they found? By whom? Where
are they now? Why do they matter? The answers to those questions
emerge, more or less, as you walk among ancient urns, Roman roof tiles,
and plaque after plaque explaining the history of the Second Temple
period and the early politics of the Middle East.
Compared to Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition, which was a model of clarity and well-judged presentation, walking through The Dead Sea Scrolls
feels like making your way through an information blizzard. Not until
reading a small-print photo caption three rooms in did I learn the
specifics about how exactly the scrolls were found, and not until
seeing the published translations of the scrolls—in an odd little study
area that feels like a space-filler near the end of the exhibit—did I
appreciate just how extensive their contents are.
The scrolls themselves come at the very end, in a hushed, dark room
where the small fragments can be seen through polycarbonate plates,
suspended in polyester net. If the experience of seeing the scrolls
makes the ancient past seem more immediate, it also demonstrates just
how distant that world is: for written documents from the Biblical era,
these eroded scraps are as good as it gets.
A Science Museum
staffer told me that they've seen great interest in the exhibit from
many religious groups, and the scrolls serve as an apt reminder that
the three great monotheistic faiths of the world—Judaism, Christianity,
and Islam—are cut, so to speak, from the same parchment. The scrolls
have many other lessons to teach us, but the lessons visitors learn
from this particular exhibit are likely to be as fragmentary as the
ancient documents themselves.
Beyond the scrolls: Omni and illuminati
Running concurrently with The Dead Sea Scrolls is the Omnifilm Arabia,
an hourlong documentary about the region’s history and geography.
Providing a comprehensive look at the past accomplishments and current
politics of the region for an audience about whose knowledge one can
make no assumptions is a tall order, and the film does a creditable job
of filling it—but that doesn’t leave much room for aesthetic creativity
or even the kind of ooh-ahh action shots Omnigoers tend to expect. See Arabia to be informed, not exhilarated.
On display adjacent to The Dead Sea Scrolls is an exhibit showcasing the St. John’s Bible,
an illuminated manuscript commissioned by St. John’s Abbey and
University in Collegeville, Minnesota; it’s the first handwritten
illuminated Bible to be created anywhere in the world since the Middle
Ages. The pages on display are striking, and the small exhibit is an
eye-opening introduction to a remarkable project being executed just up
the highway. - J.G.
