The Associated Press is reporting that an ancient and rare Old Testament manuscript is on public display for the first time, at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.

The following is an excerpt published by the Associated Press:

JERUSALEM (AP) – A rare Old Testament manuscript some 1,300 years old is finally on display for the first time, after making its way from a secret room in a Cairo synagogue to the hands of an American collector.

The manuscript, containing the “Song of the Sea” section of the Old Testament’s Book of Exodus and dating to around the 7th century A.D., comes from what scholars call the “silent era” — a span of 600 years between the third and eighth centuries from which almost no Hebrew manuscripts survive.

The parchment is believed to have been left in the Cairo Genizah, a vast depository of medieval Jewish manuscripts discovered in the late 1800s in a previously unknown room at Cairo’s ancient Ben Ezra Synagogue.

Read the news report by clicking here.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tag: Archaeology, Cairo Genizah, Manuscript