The core power of an exhibit is the opportunity it provides to see how those long-dead lived and how they live on through their influence on the living. In 1947 a Bedouin goatherder threw a rock into a Qumran cave in the Judean desert overlooking the Dead Sea and unknowingly shattered a clay jar containing some of the oldest-known surviving Biblical documents, numbering among them the Book of Psalms, Isaiah, Deuteronomy The Book of War, and a collection of thanksgiving hymns. With 20 scrolls and over 500 artifacts, the exhibit is the largest collection of Holy Land pieces ever assembled in North America.

The ages of these documents date back to 150 BCE through 68 CE a time of turmoil where clashing between Romans and Jews would lead to the end of their reign as an independent state and the destruction of Jerusalem and with it the Temple. Bronze arrowheads that may have from the Roman army’s siege on Jerusalem are shown along with coins forged from the temple’s contents that bear the inscription “Judea Capta.” The image of a mourning woman appears on the face of the coins.

Sometimes the buildup and preamble to an event turns out to be the true event. The scrolls are presented last in the downstairs portion of the exhibit although you are free to view it in any order you wish. Seeing a pair of battered, darkened, flattened leather sandals found in the Qumran caves hit me much harder than the documents themselves, as did the huge slab of stone that once made up the Jerusalem temple’s outer retaining wall which was destroyed by the Romans in 70 C.E. The etchings, lines, and grooves in the rock are stained a darker reddish color as if weeping tears or blood at its own destruction.

A short film in a screening room shows compelling footage of the questionable methods people used to assemble and consolidate all the scraps making up the Dead Sea Scrolls once they were recovered—Scotch Tape and the gum from postage stamps among them. People even smoked while handling them causing further damage, although unintentional.

The intersection of community religions is also highlighted. Domestic fertility goddess figurines found in homes indicate that folk religions entwined with monotheism in Israel. The many military invaders and conquerors who split the fabric of Israel’s periods of self-governing speak through their remnants such as sling stones and iron arrowheads from when Assyrian armies attacked Lachish in the eighth century BCE, an attack referenced in the Bible.

The exhibit shows how Israel has always been such a fertile flashpoint for conflict, strife and the emerging from and ultimate triumph over strife to flourish as an independent state. The invasions of the Assyrians to the Egyptians and Babylonians and beyond to the Byzantine era contrast sharply with items like a jug stamped with the Hebrew inscription, “belonging to the king.”

The items that form a picture of ancient life also give a window into ancient death. Ossuauries—boxes made of limestone used to store the bones of dead—are also on display, one bearing the Hebrew-Aramaic inscription “Joseph.” Fossilized fruit and seeds from a cave in Qumran also feature and provoke the imagination that you’re catapulted back in time into a past life where that food is fresh and you’re considering eating it. Altars were commonly used in homes and at shrines. One of the large four-horned pottery altar is still smudged with black ash remnants of burned incense.

Ultimately, these time-charred scraps of paper shaped like countries on maps are a map all their own of a ways of life both Jewish, Christian and beyond devoutly followed.

Dead Sea Scrolls
Discovery Times Square
226 West 44th Street