Ancient scroll exhibition inspires local church members
By Sally Carpenter sallyc@theacorn.com

Faith meets historical evidence as seen by local church members when they recently traveled to San Diego to view the Dead Sea Scrolls at the Natural History Museum. According to a museum brochure, these artifacts are "one of the greatest archaeological finds of all time."

For Richard Buckner, a Thousand Oaks resident who organized the trip along with his wife, Liz, the scrolls are more about spirituality than history.

"I am interested in the origins of Christianity because they may shed light on what Christianity should be," Buckner said. "I am interested in using Christ and his life and teachings as a model for my life. The Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit helps me understand the existential aspect of the Christian religion."

According to the museum website, the Dead Sea Scrolls are some of the oldest discovered copies of the books of the Hebrew Bible. The manuscripts were found in 1947 by a shepherd who threw rocks into a cave on the shores of the Dead Sea in Israel to find a lost goat and heard pottery shatter instead. Several caves in the area were found to contain numerous ancient scrolls, dating back more than 2,000 years, stored in clay pots.

Buckner first heard about the exhibit from a newspaper article he read in June. In what he describes as serendipity, at that time he had just finished studying the beginnings of Christianity in the Challengers adult Sunday School class at St. Patrick's Episcopal Church in Thousand Oaks.

"It was like the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit was planned to come after we had completed this preparation for it," he said.

Rather than going to the exhibit alone, the Buckners invited others to join them. The couple searched the museum's website for information, set up an itinerary, made restaurant reservations for the visit and set up car pools. Eleven other people from St. Pat's and other churches signed up for the trip.

Putting the display together for the San Diego museum took three years, said Robert Metzger, a museum employee. He said funds for the project were provided by Joan and Irwin Jacobs, San Diego residents and philanthropists. Irwin Jacobs owns Qualcomm, a company that makes cellphone components.

Technicians in Israel worked to prepare the delicate scroll fragments, some only an inch wide, for overseas shipment. During the 1940s and '50s, scholars had taken the more than 1,000 fragments and used cellophane tape to put the segments together as a jigsaw puzzle. Modernday specialists cleaned off the residue left by the tape and sewed the pieces together with thin thread.

The San Diego museum placed the scrolls in glass display boxes for viewing. The exhibition room is kept cool and dimly lit to preserve the documents, which are made of either plant material or animal skin, and prevent the ink from fading.

On seeing the exhibit, Buckner said, "It was nice to see the real McCoy. Like originals of Shakespeare's manuscripts or Thomas Paine's writing in their own hands."

Adrian Benson, a member of St. Pat's, was awed by the display. "It was really amazing to be in the same room with that much history," Benson said. "I was surprised at the small size of the fragments from the scrolls. It was incredible to look at writing that was done by someone so very long ago."

Benson considers the exhibit as the starting point, not the end of the trip. "The great thing about seeing something like this is that it makes you more thirsty for knowledge."

Trip member Lester Wagner of Simi Valley found the scrolls inspirational. "It's everything that I would expect it to be on how we got our Bible," Wagner said. "It substantiates the Old Testament" as inspired by God, not man-made.

The exhibit, which contains other artifacts and hand-lettered Bibles, continues through Dec. 31, with 12 new scroll sections on display starting in October.

The museum is at 1788 El Prado in Balboa Park. For more information, call (619) 255-0195 or visit www.sdnhm.org.