Many consider the Dead Sea Scrolls to be the most important archaeological and religious find of the past hundred years. They have also been one of the most restricted to scientists and biblical scholars. But all that will change shortly.

Thanks to Google and modern technology the scrolls will soon be online for everyone to see. On Tuesday Israel and Google announced a partnership that will bring these intriguing and mysterious scrolls to the world.

Soon, anyone with Internet access will have exact images of the original scrolls, with the text translated into English, right at their fingertips. The Dead Sea Scrolls will be available for viewing within several months and will be free to view.

In the late 1940s the Dead Sea Scrolls were found by a shepherd in a Judean Desert cave. Many of the documents were in fragments and had to be fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. In all there are over 900 manuscripts that shed light on biblical times and the origins of Christianity.

The 2,000-year-old collection of documents are written in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek and shrouded in mystery. They contain sections of the bible, apocalyptic writings and talk about communal living. No one knows who wrote them or why they were hidden away in remote caves.

Only a very small group who painstakingly assembled and translated the fragments had access to the scrolls. Then, in the 1990s a book was published containing most of the writings.

The original manuscripts are stored in a climate controlled and dark room to preserve them and even now access is extremely limited. Researchers will now have unlimited time to study the scrolls online. Because of the puzzle like nature of the scrolls there are sections that are highly debated and with unlimited time to examine everything scientists may develop new interpretations.

Thanks to the clarity of the new images many faded and unreadable sections are now visible. They were taken with an infrared camera developed by NASA for capturing images in space.

Segments of the scrolls have been displayed in museums worldwide and draw huge crowds. With the scrolls online the originals can be better protected because it will no longer be necessary to continually expose them for study.

Google is on a drive to bring historical artifacts online and has uploaded old rare books and pictures from archaeological finds.

Image via Wikipedia