the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Ancient World Exhibition

Not hann but hann's Mummy said...

Have you been to an exhibition and start tearing?

well... I did.

Went to the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Ancient World Exhibition without any expectation.

In fact, I was going to give it a miss since my friends couldn't make it.
afterall, I already know about the dead sea scrolls.

For those who have no idea what Dead Sea Scrolls are, to put it simply,
they are scrolls and hundreds of fragments of scrolls found near the Dead Sea (hence the name).
The scrolls, aged between 250 B.C and 68 A.D., contain documents which includes all or part of every book of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) with the exception of Esther.

You can Read more about the Dead Sea Scrolls and their significance here.

If you click on the picture above, you can read the panel on the right that says
"Rarest of the Rare -
Majority of the Dead Sea Scroll manuscripts reside permanently are the Shrine of the Book in Jerusalem. Very rarely are any fragments shown outside Israel, and even rarer are ones presented in the context of the overall history of the English Bible. ..."

One of the guys I went with told me that this is the nearest to Jerusalem he's been.
I don't feel the exhibition is anything like being in Jerusalem but he's probably right cos if you miss this, you won't get to see any part of the Dead Sea Scroll "live".

This is the lecturer of our tour - Curator, Dr David Byrd.

he told us that some people come and expect to see scrolls of manuscripts in this exhibition. Well... you won't see large scolls but there are only 4 tiny fragments of the Dead Sea Scroll shown here.
Hann's Papa said the total skin area shown is not bigger than the skin on his index finger.

This is my favourite fragment of the 4.
I think it's shaped like a human heart.
on which says, "in the Lord put I my trust"
if I'm not wrong, it's from Psalms 11 (in KJV), written by David - someone whom God called "a man after his own (God's) heart".

old bibles of all kind abound in this exhibition.

~ picture above taken from www.aliceteh.com

even the bible that went to the moon.

The Bible was also chosen to be the 1st book to be printed on the Moveable Type Print.

Meanwhile, people like Desiderius Erasmus,

Martin Luther and others worked on Bible translations.

The Geneva Bible is the 1st to have chapters and verse numbers with commentaries in the margin.

John's Bunyan's "The Pilgrim's Progress".

Of cos, we have the famous King James Version.
What I didn't know was... it's the Bestseller of all times! due to subsidies and such.

by the way, you can get a giant KJV bible now at $1,500 (Sing$ I think), 400th Anniversay Edition.

The promotional video says, "Come touch history and be touched."

I was touched.
not by history but like the Curator, Dr David Byrd suggested, I'm touched by the lives of the people - be they the scribes who wrote and preserved the Dead Sea Scrolls or the Famous Five (Erasmus, John Wycliff, Martin Luther, William Tydale and John Bunyan) who translated the Bible.
They are people who loved God.

He also said, at the end of the day, these men are no different from you and I.

I wanted add, "yah right. except they 'knew everything' (Erasmus) and was fluent in 1. French, 2.Greek, 3.Hebrew, 4.German, 5.Italian, 6.Latin, 7.Spanish and his native 8.English (William Tyndale)."

Perhaps the more ordinary ones are Martin Lurther and John Bunyan.

Well... I do have to agree that these men are no different from you and I because without God, they are nothing.
God chose them and gave them special talents and a passion to bring His Word to the mass.

if you are a christian and has a special talent, have you considered that it was God who gave you your talent and how have you used it to exalt Him?

"Interestingly, the only complete scroll in the entire Dead Sea collection is the 2,100-year-old Isaiah Scroll which contains this prophecy about Scripture: 'It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I (i.e. God) desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it' (Isa 55:11)"

If you have not given your life to Christ but went to this exhibition, what is your response to God?

Will you just touched history and simply walk away from the exhibition?

Or will you be touched and
"Seek the LORD while he may be found;
call on him while he is near."?
(also from the book of Isaiah. Isa 55:6)

For those who haven't been...

the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Ancient World Exhibition
now on til Sunday 20th Sep 2009
The Arts House @ Old Parliament
Singapore - The only stop in Asia

O. children under 6 are not allowed.

Don't forget to catch the 6-minute intro film at the Screening Room, level 1 before going up to the exhibits.

For more pictures and a journalist write-up on the exhibition, go to Alice's.