The Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls: The ... - josephprestonkirk

KNOX, EASTON, AND JOHNSTON 15
CONCLUSIONS
Modern imaging technologies may be applied to many problems faced
by scholars of ancient documents. In this paper, we have described one
major benefit of these new technologies—the ability to reveal previously
unknown characters. Dramatic results were obtained using a specially
designed digital camera with enhanced sensitivity at wavelengths invisible
to the eye. New characters were discovered in photographs of the Temple
Scroll by enhancing subtle color differences in the scanned images in the
degraded regions of the scroll. Yet to be investigated is whether these techniques
can be applied to the study of other antiquities, such as overwritten
parchments, cuneiform tablets, ostraca, and pottery shards.
Other tasks faced by scholars today may be facilitated by working
with digital images of the scrolls. Techniques may be developed to use
the computer to recognize partial characters, to assemble fragments
together into larger pieces, and to reconstruct larger documents from
individual pieces. Another benefit of digital imaging is that, once gathered,
digital images could be distributed conveniently to scholars worldwide
Figure 7: The top of column 16, the origin of the new characters, is
shown merged with the enhanced image of column 15. The new characters
line up with the existing text in column 15. Note the sin in line 6,
which consists of two halves, one from each column.