By LATRICIA NELL
latricia@newsroom.byu.edu
The Dead Sea Scrolls database, which The Center for the Preservation of Ancient Religious Texts has spent years working on, will be published in compact disk form in mid October.
The database is an electronic, searchable version of the non-biblical texts contained in the Dead Sea Scrolls. It will be available on an international level, said Daniel C.Peterson, director of CPART.
'The non-biblical writings are original, no one in the community has ever seen them before,' Peterson said.
Non-biblical writings are sectarian writings, or religious writings explaining how to live, said Terry Ball, a BYU professor of ancient texts.
CPART produced the non-biblical part of the Dead Sea Scrolls because the biblical scrolls are similar to the ones in use, and the collection of scrolls is large, Peterson said.
The computer software for the compact disk was created at BYU, Peterson said. The program can adapt to any language.
The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in Qumran, which is 18 kilometers east of Jerusalem and near the Dead Sea. They were found in clay jars in a cave near the Dead Sea shoreline by Bedouin shepherds in 1947.
The Scrolls are said to date back to the Second Temple period, which is twice as old as the medieval manuscripts that have been used for modern day biblical texts.
Because of political unrest, translations of the Dead Sea Scrolls have been difficult to compile, Peterson said. The Scrolls were found in what was then Jordanian territory, later taken over by Israel in the Six Days War in 1967.
'They've been off in various hands; scholar 'A' wouldn't let scholar 'B' look at the texts,' Peterson said.
The compilation has been a tremendous effort, and BYU has played a large role, Peterson said.
Among the Dead Sea Scrolls is the Isaiah scroll. The scroll is the oldest Isaiah version that has been found, Peterson said. It backs up the text that we have of the bible.
When found, the Dead Sea Scrolls, contained at least a little fragment of all of the Old Testament books except Esther, Peterson said.
The Dead Sea Scroll project is only one venture CPART is involved in. The organization was created in 1997 in connection with the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies.
Unlike FARMS, CPART specializes in projects that are not immediately connected to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. They have a large non-LDS audience, Peterson said.
CPART is also involved in an Islamic translation series. They have translated the writings of Al-Ghazali, an Islamic philosopher, and have plans to continue research in other areas.
Because many of the sciences, especially mathematics and astronomy, come from the medieval time period, CPART plans to expand into medieval science, Peterson said.