Yesterday Natalie and I toured the exhibit, "From the Dead Sea Scrolls to the Bible in America." It was amazing to see the ancient artifacts that were displayed. Several fragments from the Dead Sea Scrolls were there. It was awesome to see pieces of the very scrolls that were so carefully copied and then stored away in the caves at Qumran just before the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947 was the greatest discovery ever made in the field of Biblical textual studies. It ended doubts about the accuracy of the textual transmission of the Hebrew Scriptures from antiquity to the medieval world. The Dead Sea Scrolls can be accurately dated to circa 250 B.C. to 68 A.D.
Continuing on through the exhibit we saw fragments from a 4th Century Septuagint on papyrus, a papyrus fragment of Paul's letter to the Colossians, a Latin Vulgate Bible, a Wyclif Bible, a page from a 1455 Gutenberg Bible, a Tyndale Bible, the Geneva Bible, and a King James Bible.
Did you know that the first Bible printed in America (dated 1663), was a missionary Bible in the Native American dialect of Algonquian? We also saw the 2x2 inch microfilm of the King James Bible that was on the Apollo 13 space mission.
We had to laugh when we overheard a young girl looking at the "Lunar Bible" say, "How are they supposed to read that?" !!!
As you know, this Lunar Bible didn't make it to the moon on the Apollo 13 mission. However one similar to this one was carried in the pocket of astronaut Ed Mitchell's space suit, and made it onto the lunar surface during the Apollo 14 mission.
There was also a hand-written letter by C.H. Spurgeon to his son, and hand-written chapter notes by C.S. Lewis for The Weight of Glory on display.
All in all, I came away awestruck - in awe of God and in awe of the men God used to preserve His Word. I'm sure the Essene Jews who lived in Qumran had no idea that people living in California in 2010 would be gazing in amazement at the sacred words they had so meticulously written. I also came away with a new sense gratefulness for my Bible. The Bible we hold in our hands today came to us because men were willing to die in order to have God's Word translated and disseminated to the world. I will open my Bible with a new sense of appreciation from now on.
"...for I am watching over My word to perform it." (Jer.1:12, NASB)
