Fanny Pack? Remember them? Twenty-five years ago, they were all the rage. Whenever you traveled, it seemed that everyone you saw had these little pouches, belted around the waist. We kept our passports, sun glasses, lip gloss, and lots of miscellaneous stuff we wanted to carry, in the many pockets on our travels.
I have a beautiful black leather pack, with at least three little pockets, that served me well early in my retirement when I traveled to Italy and Great Britain. The other day, as I was sorting through a storage closet, I found it again and remembered. I checked out each of the pockets, then I remembered the “hidden pocket”, a little zippered place on the belt itself. I opened it. There was something there! Can you believe, a $100 dollar bill! Oh, yes, the just-in-case money! I had forgotten about that.
Have you ever done that? Taken something valuable and put it away for “safe keeping”, then you can’t remember where you put it! Obviously, I am guilty of that, and I wondered if the ancients were also guilty of that when they “squirreled” away all those Holy Scrolls?
So, I did some deep, deep Biblical research (meaning I Googled ‘Dead Sea Scrolls’) and found some interesting stuff, new to me, but maybe not to you. Here are some ‘Did you Knows’ trivia.
Did you Know — The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered between 1946 and 1956 in the Qumran caves in modern-day Israel, less than 2 miles from the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea, thus the name.
Did you Know — That before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, on or about 1946, the oldest known manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible dated to the 10th Century A.D.?
Did you Know — The Dead Sea Scrolls include fragments from every book of the Old Testament except for the book of Esther.
Did you Know — That among the Dead Sea Scrolls, were works written by the Essenes, unrelated to the topics contained within the scrolls themselves. Maybe Bible study group journals?
Did you Know — The Dead Sea Scrolls comprised more than 800 documents made of animal skins, papyrus, and sheets of copper. Really, sheets of copper? Where did that come from? Amazon? No!
You may ask, what does this have to do with my ancient fanny pack and even more ancient Dead Sea Scrolls? Why, nothing at all, except I would guess that the ancients put the scrolls away for safekeeping, and because they were ancients, they promptly forgot where. (Makes sense to me.)
Seriously, the Dead Sea Scrolls were an absolutely amazing and spectacular find. Wikipedia tells us: “The discovery of the Scrolls is considered a keystone in the history of archaeology with great historical, religious, and linguistic significance because they include the oldest surviving manuscripts of entire books later included in the biblical canon’s along with extra-biblical manuscripts which preserve evidence of the diversity of religious thought before the emergence of Christianity and Judaism.”
So, my friends, that is your Biblical-related history essay for today. Fodder for you next Bible Trivia game. Remember where you got it … Google!
For What It’s Worth.
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