Right now, let's say good morning to the head of the Dead Sea Scrolls Unit at the Israel Antiquities Authority. It's doctor Joel Uziel. Good morning, doctor.
Good morning, good morning.
Thank you so much for calling us. We understand you're calling us from Israel this morning.
Yeah, that's right, it's not morning for me. It's late afternoon.
Perfect. Well, it sounds like you're right next door. So the Dead Sea scroll Exhibit is happening now at the Reagan Presidential Library. I got to go and check it out. Was really interesting. So if you haven't been, now is the time to go. If you've already been, you might want to go again because the scrolls of the Ten Commandments are now on display. Tell us about the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Ten Commandments and why we get to see them.
That's exactly right. Now is the time to go, even if you've been there already, Because the Dead Sea Sculls Exhibition is at the Reagan for nine months. Every three months we switch out the scrolls with a new set of scrolls that we bring over. Because the Dead Sea Scrolls, which are a unique set of documents that date back two thousand years to the period of Second Temple period, Judaism and the period of the rise of early Christianity,
and they were preserved in the dry desert climate. But in order to conserve them, we only display them for three months and then they come back to Israel to our storerooms and rest for five years. However, this week we put a special scroll on display and it's only going to be there for two weeks, and that's the Ten Commandment scroll. Now, I'll just say the Dead Sea scrolls on the whole include the earliest copies of the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, that have been found to date,
and they date back some two thousand years. Commandments roll is the earliest copy of the Ten Commandments that we have, which includes all the commandments. And what's interesting is that the Hebrew Bible actually presents the Ten Comandments twice, one time in the book of that Exodus and one time in the Bookcoon's Deuteronomy. And this version of the Ten Comandments actually is a sort of combination of the two, bringing some aspects from each because they're not exactly the same.
And I'll just give one example, for example, the commandment to keep the Sabbath. Different reasons for keeping the Sabbath are given into two different versions in Exodus and Deuteronomy. Yeah, so one says that the reason for keeping the Sabbath is because God created the world in six days and on the seventh day he rested. And the other reason is for the exodus for the Jews leaving Egypt after
their slavery there. And this version actually brings both reasons for keeping the Sabbath, and so it's a very unique document and scholars believe it was probably used to read the tech tench Commandments in a public let's say, display or reading in front of the community.
Wow, that I'd never heard that there was, that there was two Like that? Tell us because you're speaking, you're talking about a two thousand year old document. I mean, when we go to Washington, DC, you can see the you can see the Constitution. It's only a couple hundred years old, and it's very faded and very fragile. So I mean, how are these even together?
Well, the amazing thing is that the very very dry climate of the Judean desert actually helped preserve the documents that are written on leather, and so they survived two thousand years in the desert and in their initial discovery, they actually weren't treated correctly because the knowledge for conservation wasn't there, and so some damage was caused in the
early years of their discovery. But over the past thirty five years, the Israel Antiquities Authority has been using the strictest methods of conservation, which include keeping them at very strict temperatures and humidity and also limiting their exposure to light. And in this way they're actually quite visible, and so you can actually see the actual document and if you read Hebrew, you can actually read it, which is amazing because it's the same script that is still being used
to this day in modern Israel. And if you have some difficulty seeing it, we actually we actually have the display next to the actual scroll has an infrared image of it which uses infrared for photographics technology to make the text much much clearer.
That is so cool. And I did go to the Reagan Library and like I said, we talked about it on our out and about segment, if you'll remember, and it was interesting that everything is very very low light. And I remember that from when we went to Washington, d C. Too, Like they had the first American flag and it's displayed in very low lights because the light really denigrates the quality of the document.
Yes, that's exactly it. In order to make sure we don't let the documents fade. The lighting is very very low, but it's still enough that everything is very clear and visible, and so you can really see that everything firsthand. And again, this is a unique opportunity because the school will be there just for two weeks and then it's coming back home and it won't be back in the US for a very long time.
All right, Doctor Joe Uzield, head of the Dead Sea Squirrels Unit at the Israel Antiquities Authority, thank you so much for the information. This is just just fascinating. So it's going to be the next two weeks and it's at the Reagan Library and you can go to Reaganlibrary dot com and get your tickets because I would imagine it's going to be crowded. Thank you, doctor Joe.
Thank you, thank you so much.
Take care. Oh that was a little familiar of me to call him doctor Joe, and I think that's okay. We got to know him amazing. Yeah, that is so cool. If you haven't been seriously again, the next two weeks and then the swirls are going to be there for the next few months, so you have time. But for the Ten Commandments, that's probably once in a lifetime