Joseph Lauer who is an invaluable resource being one of the first to bring to our attention to impt. media info. posted the following from Breaking News. It's from a presentation by an Irish professor and is inexcusable !
(excerpt) ' Breaking News reports Hidden secrets of the Dead Sea Scrolls could be unlocked by British scientists using super-powerful X-rays. The Diamond Light Source (DLS) in Didcot, England, is a machine the size of five football pitches that generates X-rays a type of high energy light 100 billion times brighter than those in a hospital. Scientists have developed a way of using the beams to read rolled up parchments too fragile to be unfolded. The technique has already been used successfully to transcribe a number of 18th century Scottish legal documents from the National Archive. In future, researchers hope to probe much more ancient parchments dating back hundreds or even thousands of years, as well as classical musical scores written by famous composers. Ya gotta be kidding, whomsoever it advising this Irish professor is ca 40 years out of date. As I once curated these scrolls, I can say that they were unrolled, unraveled, decades ago, and while this instrument may have some usage in other areas it will not have any relevance to the DSS as he suggests. The War Scroll which he presents as an example which could be unraveled, was published decades ago. This is another example of how folks draw attention to themselves by mentioning the DSS as well as, if there is anything wrong with Biblical Studies, start with Qumran and the DSS. It's a circus. Had the scrolls not had been mentioned in his presentation, no one would have picked up his story. Misleading or academic ignorance, by a professor, inexcusable, though at Qumran I've seen worse. Joe Zias
