Department of Neurobiology, George Wise Faculty of Life Sciences, Tel-Aviv University, Tel-Aviv 6997801, Israel.
Human Evolution, Department of Organismal Biology and SciLife Lab, Uppsala University, 751 05 Uppsala, Sweden.
Cell. 2020 Jun 11;181(6):1218-1231.e27. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2020.04.046. Epub 2020 Jun 2.
The discovery of the 2,000-year-old Dead Sea Scrolls had an incomparable impact on the historical understanding of Judaism and Christianity. "Piecing together" scroll fragments is like solving jigsaw puzzles with an unknown number of missing parts. We used the fact that most scrolls are made from animal skins to "fingerprint" pieces based on DNA sequences. Genetic sorting of the scrolls illuminates their textual relationship and historical significance. Disambiguating the contested relationship between Jeremiah fragments supplies evidence that some scrolls were brought to the Qumran caves from elsewhere; significantly, they demonstrate that divergent versions of Jeremiah circulated in parallel throughout Israel (ancient Judea). Similarly, patterns discovered in non-biblical scrolls, particularly the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice, suggest that the Qumran scrolls represent the broader cultural milieu of the period. Finally, genetic analysis divorces debated fragments from the Qumran scrolls. Our study demonstrates that interdisciplinary approaches enrich the scholar's toolkit.
两千年前死海古卷的发现对犹太教和基督教的历史理解产生了无与伦比的影响。将古卷碎片“拼接”起来，就像是用无数缺失的碎片来玩拼图游戏。我们利用大多数古卷是由动物皮制成的这一事实，根据 DNA 序列对碎片进行“指纹”识别。对古卷进行基因分类可以揭示它们的文本关系和历史意义。厘清耶利米残片之间有争议的关系提供了证据，证明有些古卷是从其他地方带到库姆兰洞穴的；重要的是，它们表明耶利米的不同版本在整个以色列（古代朱迪亚）同时流传。同样，在非圣经古卷中发现的模式，特别是安息日祭祀之歌，表明库姆兰古卷代表了当时更广泛的文化环境。最后，基因分析将有争议的碎片与库姆兰古卷分开。我们的研究表明，跨学科方法丰富了学者的工具包。
