Saturday, October 21, 2006

THE SEATTLE DEAD SEA SCROLLS EXHIBITION is covered in the Longview Daily News. It's the usual sort of survey piece, but it lists each exhibited scroll and gives some information on it, sometimes in garbled form. But there's this interesting aside:
The actual researchers have modern-day science on their side. Because most of the scrolls were written on animal skins, scientists can match DNA to piece the puzzle together. It can take them a month to conserve three or four fragments.
I've always thought that DNA analysis should be used someday to connect up otherwise unidentifiable scroll fragments (and to verify connections made on other grounds). If this paragraph is accurate, it seems that this process has begun, which is good.

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