JERUSALEM (AP) – Israeli archaeologists announced Tuesday the discovery of dozens of new fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls with a biblical text found in a desert cave and believed to have been hidden during a Jewish revolt against Rome nearly 1,900 years ago.
The parchment fragments have lines of Greek text from the books of Zechariah and Nahum and have been radiocarbon dated to the 2nd century AD, according to the Israel Antiquities Authority. They are the first new scrolls found in archaeological excavations in the desert south of Jerusalem in 60 years.
The new pieces are believed to belong to a set of parchment fragments found at a site known as “The Cave of Horror,” named for the 40 human skeletons found there during excavations in the 1960s, which also contain a version Greek of the Twelve Minors. Prophets. The cave is located in a remote canyon in the Judean desert south of Jerusalem.
The fragments are believed to have been hidden in the cave during the Bar Kochba revolt, an armed Jewish uprising against Rome during the reign of Emperor Hadrian, between AD 132 and 136. C.
The artifacts were found during an Israel Antiquities Authority operation in the Judean desert to find scrolls and other artifacts to prevent possible looting. The authority was holding a press conference Tuesday to reveal the discovery.
The Dead Sea Scrolls, a collection of Jewish texts found in desert caves in the West Bank near Qumran in the 1940s and 1950s, date from the 3rd century BC to the 1st century AD They include the oldest known copies of Biblical texts and documents that describe the beliefs of a poorly understood Jewish sect.