If you’re anything like me, the fantasy of witnessing biblical times in biblical locations has a particular thrill – I often wonder if I spent some time there long, long ago. Perhaps so many of us are fascinated by these times and places because we hang so much weight on the events chronicled in the bible, both religiously and culturally, and yet every day life in biblical times is rather unknowable. The Dead Sea Scrolls shed some light on the true nature of biblical era life, and I am very grateful that they were discovered! Now, Google has decided to digitize the documents so that they may be experienced widely:

Dead Sea Scrolls to get ‘Google’ treatment

Dead Sea Scrolls will get their own database, courtesy of the web search giant. The Dead Sea Scrolls are some two thousand years old.

A worker of the Israel Antiquities Authority points at a fragment of the Dead Sea Scrolls in a laboratory in Jerusalem, Tuesday, Oct. 19. Israel’s Antiquities Authority and Google announced Tuesday they are joining forces to bring the Dead Sea Scrolls online, allowing both scholars and the general public widespread access to the ancient manuscripts for the first time.

AP Photo/Sebastian Scheiner

By Tia Goldenberg, Associated Press

The Dead Sea Scrolls, among the world’s most important, mysterious and tightly restricted archaeological treasures, are about to get Googled.

The technology giant and Israel announced Tuesday that they are teaming up to give researchers and the public the first comprehensive and searchable database of the scrolls — a 2,000-year-old collection of Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek documents that shed light on Judaism during biblical times and the origins of Christianity. For years, experts have complained that access to the scrolls has been too limited.

Once the images are up, anyone will be able to peruse exact copies of the original scrolls as well as an English translation of the text on their computer — for free. Officials said the collection, expected to be available within months, will feature sections that have been made more legible thanks to high-tech infrared technology…

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