Doug and I had a fun weekend. On Saturday we ventured down to San Diego to the Museum of Natural History for a special exhibit showing the Dead Sea Scrolls. The traffic going down was pretty miserable, and the museum itself was underwhelming (especially compared to the Smithsonians in Washington DC) but the special exhibit was pretty neat. There were hand-held audio guides for everyone so it was a bit like a personal tour guide. The scroll fragments were remarkably small--we wondered how they could be so precise in writing especially without fine tip ball point pens ;).
It was interesting but sad to see how modern science tried to interpret Biblical text while leaving God out of the picture.
Here is a picture of the Deuteronomy Scroll that has the 10 Commandments on it. The scholarly translation was a little different than our King James version of the Bible, but still very similar. The scroll was only about 4 inches tall. We both agreed that we are especially grateful for the Book of Mormon. This book was definitely preserved by God and brought forth by his power. It's miraculous that two men working 85 days were able to translate the gold plates. It took many scholars years to piece together fragments of text from the Dead Sea Scrolls. We are also grateful for modern revelation that allows us to receive additional instruction and clarification on God's instruction to us. I'm glad we don't have to rely solely on Bible text that has been copied and re-written for thousands of years.
