2,000-Year-Old Coal Lump Found to Contain Biblical Text

The website Western Journalism is reporting on something awfully cool.

Back in 1970, during excavations taking place in En-Gedi, Israel, where lived a sizable Jewish community from roughly 800 B.C. to about 600 A.D., a burnt scroll was discovered. It turns out that the community was wiped out by a fire. Anyway, the scroll has always looked to be like a lump of charcoal, and, as such, has not been able to be read by anyone���until now.

Scientists at the University of Kentucky, using a technique they developed known as ���virtual unwrapping,��� which allows for an examination of the scroll���s contents without the need for it to be physically unwrapped or opened, have discovered something rather amazing: that this burnt scroll, this ���lump of charcoal,��� contains an early���VERY early���version of the first couple of chapters of the Book of Leviticus.

���We were amazed at the quality of the images ��� much of the text is as readable as that of unharmed Dead Sea scrolls,��� said biblical scholar Michael Segal of Jerusalem���s Hebrew University.

Continued Segal, ������ we now have evidence that this text was being used from a very early date by Jews in the land of Israel.���

Dead Sea scrolls expert Emanuel Tov, also of Hebrew University, said, ���We have never found something as striking as this. This is the earliest evidence of the exact form of the [early] text.���

And you thought the only news these days is bad news.

By Robert G. Yetman, Jr. Editor At Large