Monday, August 06, 2007

Scrolls

Did you know that San Diego County is remarkably like the Holy Land in geology, climate and even animal and plant life? Well, sort of. They're in two of the world's five temperate "Mediterranean" areas, seismically shaped, and at the confluence of several flora and fauna environments.
Another convergence is happening as we speak: the largest ever exhibition of Dead Sea Scrolls outside Israel is now on at the San Diego Museum of Natural History. (Natural history museum pedagogy presumably explains the factoid about this being geograohically a new Israel, not the confluence of Evangelicals, Jews and Latter Day Saints in the area...!) I went to see it this afternoon. It's an impressive show! Although the scrolls on view (ten from Israel and a few more from Jordan, with others to come in a few months) are small, their very tininess made their survival and decipherment that much more exciting. (The picture above is Paleo-Leviticus 11Q1.)