Live Science | In Photos: New Dead Sea Scrolls Revealed

Two new books reveal about 25 unpublished Dead Sea Scrolls fragments held in two separate collections. The scroll seen here preserves parts of the Book of Leviticus and is now in the Schøyen Collection. In this fragment God promises that if the Sabbath is observed and the 10 commandments are obeyed the people of Israel will be rewarded. [Read more about the Dead Sea Scrolls finding]

More recently, archaeologists discovered a previously unknown cave in Qumran that would have held fragments of Dead Sea Scrolls, one of which was found inside.

This fragment preserves part of the Book of Nehemiah (Nehemiah 2:13-16) and is now in the Museum of the Bible, a 430,000-square-foot museum under construction near the Capitol in Washington, D.C.

No copies of Nehemiah were found by archaeologists in the Qumran caves, making the origins of this fragment a mystery. The fragment describes the return of a man named Nehemiah to Jerusalem after the city had been sacked by the Babylonians. He finds that the city gates had been “scorched by fire.”

This fragment, now in the Museum of the Bible Collection, preserves part of the Book of Genesis. It tells part of the story of Jacob, a patriarch who, according to legend, the Israeli people are descended from.

Read more at In Photos: New Dead Sea Scrolls Revealed.