Dead Sea Scrolls show said to be largest ever

More than 40,000 tickets have been sold for what is billed as the largest-ever showing of the Dead Sea Scrolls, opening June 29 at the San Diego Natural History Museum. The Balboa Park museum expects a record crowd of more than 400,000 to view the ancient biblical documents over the next six months, said spokeswoman Jessica Chatigny — more visitors than the museum typically gets in a full year.

The show, drawn from Israel, Jordan and other countries, features 27 Dead Sea Scrolls, 10 of them displayed for the first time, said exhibit curator Risa Levitt-Kohn, director of the Jewish Studies Program at San Diego State University.

“It’s not your traditional objects-in-cases show,” Levitt-Kohn said. “It transports you back in place and time.”

In one section of the two-story exhibition, visitors enter through a simulated cave to experience how a Bedouin goatherd discovered the first scrolls in 1947 in a cave near ruins of the ancient village of Qumran on the shores of the Dead Sea.

In ensuing years, fragments of several hundred documents, dating from the 3rd century BC through the 2nd century, were found in the area. They include early biblical texts, liturgical texts and community rules attributed mostly to the Essenes, a breakaway Jewish sect. Together they shed light on the Bible, the history of Palestine and early Jewish and Christian practices.

Among the original documents that San Diego will display for the first time in the U.S., Levitt-Kohn said, are portions of the Isaiah and Copper scrolls. The first is the Scrolls’ only complete copy of a biblical book, and the second describes locations of treasures — which have never been found.

Other exhibition areas re-create the excavations with original artifacts; explore the science of document dating and reconstruction; relate the later history of the scrolls; and present a virtual tour of ancient Qumran using a model built by Robert R. Cargill, a UCLA doctoral candidate.

Tickets, sold by date and time, start at $18 for museum members and $24 for nonmembers; less for children, seniors and groups. The exhibit runs through Dec. 31. (877) 946-7797, www.sdscrolls.org.