New Dead Sea Scroll Discovery Announced...

It’s all over the news services today:

https://tinyurl.com/f4fdr5nb

The bottom part of the picture from the article looks like Zacharias 8:17

καὶ ἕκαστος τὴν κακίαν τοῦ πλη> σίον αὐτοῦ > μὴ λογίζεσθε > ἐν ταῖς κα> ρδίαις ὑμῶν καὶ > > ρκον ψευδῆ μὴ ἀγαπᾶτε, διότι ταῦτα > πάν> τα ἐμίσησα, λέγει κύριος παντοκράτωρ.

But I can’t read the top part of it well enough to match the previous verses.

I’d be less interested in the manuscripts and more interested in knowing more about the “mummified child wrapped in a 6,000-year-old blanket.” Would that be Jewish or not, or is there nothing to tell? I guess there wouldn’t be, for I don’t think there was anything distinctive about Jewish burial practices (as distinct from funeral rites) in those days or in that environment. Please tell me if I’m wrong.
All I’ve seen about the find is what Barry posted.

If the mummified child dates from 4,000 years before the 1st century, then it certainly isn’t Jewish. That’s Neolithic.

And less interested in the manuscripts? Shocking for a papyrologist… :slight_smile:

I don’t see how the top 3 lines in the fragment go with the Zechariah 8:17 at the bottom. I still can’t make out line one. But I would have thought that line 2 was:

ταις πλατε[ι]αις

Line 3 is something like

ανηρ τ.<>κα

EDIT: Maybe some of the pieces are glued together incorrectly in the image. I now see that “ταις πλατειαις” shows up a few verses earlier in chapter 8. Line 3 might begin with αλιμ (as in ιερουσ-αλιμ)

Preliminary notes.

Found in Palestine at Qumran, like the others. Now in Jerusalem.

Parchment scroll. Greek translation not of any of the Torah books but of the book of the Twelve Minor Prophets (small bits of Zechariah and Nahum identified), so from the Nevi’im, presumably the whole book of the Twelve (and no more than that?). Only a few letters surviving.

It’s not said whether the cave had been previously looted. From the condition of the scraps it looks like it. Or is this a re-excavation of a cave earlier explored? They don’t say.
——But apparently so. Seems the scraps come from the aptly named Cave of Horror, where Jewish refugees from the Bar Kokhba revolt perished under siege (cf. Masada). And apparently they belong to a scroll of the Twelve found (or published) in 1952, which is very much more substantial.

If so it’s unlikely to be fake, as all the unscrupulous Museum of the Bible’s acquisitions are.

Seems the Zech. piece is the most substantial of the new remnants. (Image variously online, and major part reproduced by jeidsath on textkit.) Bits of it have stuck together—dampened in the course of restoration?

“Slight” differences from the other Bible versions are reported (in these new scraps??—none apparent on the images). That is not at all surprising. The find has been heavily hyped by the Israel Antiquities Authority, but does not seem very significant.