Qumran [ancient Judea]
Circa 100 BC – AD 50.
A fragment of a scroll, approx. 30 x 44 mm (very uneven, of course), four lines in a fine regular Herodian Hebrew book script. Text is now identified as being from Nehemiah Chapter 3 verses 14 and 15: THE ONLY FRAGMENT CONFIRMED TO BE FROM THE BOOK OF NEHEMIAH IN THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS.
This is the oldest Biblical Manuscript material for sale in the world.
Provenance: 1. Community of the Essenes, Qumran (circa 30 BC-68 AD); 2. Qumran Cave 4 (A.D. 68-1952); 3. Bedouin discoverers to Khalil Iskander Shahin in Bethlehem. 4. Khalil Iskander Shahin to a private collector in France (1953-2004) 4. Private collection, Switzerland (2004-2006). Purchased and re-conserved by an American dealer in 2006.
The item is guaranteed to be authentic, legally exported from the Middle East in the 1950s and legally imported into the United States.
The item is accompanied by a full scientific and scholarly report.
The leather is slightly darkened, so that the text can only be fully read via infrared photography.
The fragment is about 80% legible under natural light. Such darkening is typical, especially in the tiny selection of fragments that remain in private hands.
Extraordinarily rare and important: the only portion of Nehemiah ever found from the greatest archaeological discovery of all time: The Dead Sea Scrolls, the earliest fragments of Holy Scripture extant.
This fragment is published online and is scheduled to be published in 2008 by Prof. James Charlesworth of the Princeton Theological Seminary and Head of Princeton’s Dead Sea Scroll project in the academic journal MAARAV: A Journal for the Study of the Northwest Semitic Languages and Literatures. Prof. Charlesworth intends to follow the journal publication with a monograph. The photographs used are the high-resolution digitizations of the recto and verso of the fragment under natural light and infrared that were taken in early 2008 by Bruce and Ken Zuckerman of the West Semitic Research Project based at the University of Southern California.
Professor Charlesworth’s online publication of the fragment is viewable at :
http://www.ijco.org/?categoryId=28681 |
