February 2017 saw the announcement across all news media of the discovery of a new Dead Sea Scrolls cave.
It highlights the continued fascination with these ancient documents and a continuing curiosity over what may yet be found in the barren deserts that border the lowest point on earth.
Original scroll find
The story of the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947 is well known and probably somewhat embellished with time. Bedouin shepherd boys found the first cave accidently and the scrolls inside made their way, inevitably, onto the antiquities market. A Bethlehem dealer, Kando, handled these original discoveries. Identified by the newly formed State of Israel, they were quickly bought up to become national treasures and archaeological expertise was sent to the cave regions. Over 900 scrolls have been found in 11 caves, most of them in the most famous, Cave 4.
Comedy, free speech and warnings from the past
Hannah Arendt was a Jewish philosopher who grew up in Nazi Germany. Eventually she had to flee to France and, …