Google and Israel put Dead Sea Scrolls online

The Dead Sea Scrolls can now be searched and read online thanks to a partnership between Google and the Israel Museum. 

HAIFA, ISRAEL (Catholic Online) - Citing Google's mission to organize the world's information and make it accessible, Yossi Matias, managing director of Google's R&D Center in Israel praised the new resource. 

The scrolls are a collection of Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic scriptures and extra-biblical documents that were found between 1947 and 1956 in a small cavern in what is today the Palestinian West Bank. The texts are important for both their religious and historical significance. The scrolls are dated between 150 and 170 BC. It's believed they were hidden about the time when the Romans destroyed the temple in Jerusalem in 70 AD. 

Sections of the scrolls are on display at Israel's Museum's Shrine of the Book, and are viewed on a three to four month rotating schedule to minimize exposure of the books to light and elements. The scrolls are so fragile, they cannot even be exposed to direct sunlight. 
However, the Google tool on the Israel Museum website makes the scrolls accessible and has tools to translate the scrolls into English.  

Browsers can visit the scrolls here.

Matias said, "The opportunity is amazing here for culture and heritage information. We are trying to expand this and address these historical and heritage archives and there are great things that can be done here."

Of the eight scrolls housed at the Israel Museum since 1965, five of them have been digitized. The Great Isaiah Scroll is the best documented and can be searched by column, chapter, and verse. It has an English translation tool with it and users can submit their own translations. 

James Snyder, director of the museum said, "For us, the Dead Sea Scrolls couldn't be a more important iconic cultural artifact. Any opportunity for us to bring them to the widest possible public audience and offer the opportunity to really begin to understand what these amazing documents are all about is something that we embrace."

Google and the museum both declined to discuss the cost of the project.

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