Dead Sea and The Scrolls

When we left the fertile green valley surrounding the Sea of Galilee, we headed south to the Judean desert and the Dead Sea.  Although he would have walked on the east side of the river, as did all Jews to avoid the Samaritans, this is essentially the change in terrain Christ would have experienced when traveling to Jerusalem via Jericho, most likely.





That fence you see along side the road is a security fence between Jordan and Israel.  The road beside it is patrolled daily by the Israeli army, although Jordan is no longer considered a hostile neighbor.



Really, I was surprised by the variety of landscape in such a small country.  From Mediterranean splendor by the ocean to fertile valleys that look like Napa to desert like Utah and New Mexico and mountains like Colorado.  There are even swamps described by Mark Twain when he visited Israel that have all been pumped dry by the  modern State of Israel.



An Ibex.  These are protected by law in Israel.  I was looking through the New Era for February and there was an artist's drawing of Nephi looking for food for his family after making a new bow with an Ibex in the background.  Made me smile.

We stopped in Qumran where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found by a bedouin shepherd in 1946.   The story goes he was looking for a lost sheep when he discovered several urns with rolled up leather scrolls inside.  He sold them to a Jewish archeologist for $97.  They continued to discover scrolls for the next 10 years.  The leading theory about how they got there and who wrote them is that they were written,  preserved and buried by a Jewish sect known as Essenes who escaped to live in the caves of the desert during the Jewish Revolt around the time of the destruction of the second temple.  They would have lived there during the same time other Jews went to Masada, which is quite close by.



Example of the types of containers found buried.



Pottery discovered in the caves.



You can see how the landscape is.  There are caves everywhere.



Part of the excavation discovered this water cistern.  It made me chuckle to think of other tourists peering over the ledge and losing their hats, as you can see some at the bottom.



One of the reason they believe the Essenes were responsible is the number of Mikvehs or ritual baths found at the site.  This sect of Judaism were very ritualistic and were required to bathe before meals to purify themselves.



I took this picture because a member of our group went way out of bounds to take pictures.  He was always doing this.  On our final day in Jerusalem, he finally got left behind and had to find his own way back to the hotel.  Can you see the turquoise shirt off in the distance?



During the excavation, they found hundreds of thousands of date pits here, leading scholars to believe this would have been a work site.



One of the caves where scrolls were found.




The Dead Sea is very stunning.  Due to the high mineral content, the colors of the water vary by depth. Its waters are very therapeutic for some and several cosmetic companies have exclusive rights to sell the mud and salt products.  Cleopatra and Herod fought over the area and its balsam tree sap which could me made into a perfume.



It is also receding at an alarming rate.  Israel uses the Sea of Galilee and the Jordan River as a reservoir. Since discovering the effects of its use on the Dead Sea, they have been developing Desalination treatments and hope to use that process for water exclusively in five years.



Although we only had one hour before dinner and rehearsal when we got to our hotel and the weather was quite fierce, Maureen and I knew we'd regret not swimming in the Dead Sea.  Of course, you can't actually swim in the dead sea.  It is to salty and you float too high.  It was hard to stay vertical, especially with the wind pushing us over.  We sure got the giggles when we got knocked of our feet and were rolling around trying to sit back up.





The scrolls are housed at the Israeli Museum in a unique building called The Shrine of the Book.  The temperature and humidity are kept under strict control and the roof is sprayed from time to time to keep it just so.  The dark wall next to the shrine is a sculpture created in reference to text found on one of the scrolls.  It referred to the End of Days and the great battle between the Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness.



The inside of the Shrine of the Book.  The walls were lined with scrolls and the interpretations.  The center scroll is actually a photocopy (but a really good one!) of the best preserved scrolled known as the Isaiah Scroll.  The scroll contains the entire book of Isaiah.  I think the design of the building, to look like a scroll, is beautiful.