(C) Alec Muffett's DropSafe blog.
Author Name: Alec Muffett
This story was originally published on allecmuffett.com. [1]
License: CC-BY-SA 3.0.[2]
Computer Breaks Monopoly On Study of Dead Sea Scrolls
1991-09-05 00:00:00
Researchers using a desktop computer say they have broken the grip a coterie of scholars has held for 40 years on the Dead Sea Scrolls, one of the great finds of Biblical archeology.
The scholars have published transcriptions of less than half of the scrolls and have allowed only limited access to the rest. The scrolls, containing accounts and insights into the history of Judaism and the origins of Christianity, have long tantalized Biblical researchers who have sharply criticized the slow pace in publishing transcriptions and translations of them.
But in what amounts to an end run around the scholarly blockade, two researchers at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati devised a computer program that used a listing of all the words in one collection of scrolls to reconstruct part of the original text. Every Word Is Listed
The listing, called a concordance, is organized like a dictionary, listing every use of every word that appears in a text, identifying the places where the word is found and also giving the context in which the word is used. Similiar concordances have been prepared for most of the texts found in 11 caves near the Dead Sea, and the computer method could theoretically be used to produce texts from other unpublished scroll material as well.
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[1] URL:
https://www.nytimes.com/1991/09/05/world/computer-breaks-monopoly-on-study-of-dead-sea-scrolls.html
[2] URL:
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
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