Ten Commandments

One of earliest known copies of Ten Commandments sees the light of day

By William Booth

A replica of a segment of the 2,000-year-old Ten Commandments scroll is shown in 2012. The oldest complete example of the Ten Commandments usually resides in complete darkness in a secure vault, but it will be on rare display in Jerusalem at the Israel Museum’s new exhibit, “A Brief History of Humankind.” (Menahem Kahana/Agence France-Presse via Getty Images)

By William Booth May 21 at 4:54 PM  

JERUSALEM — One of the earliest known copies of the Ten Commandments was written in soot on a strip of goatskin found among the trove of biblical material known as the Dead Sea Scrolls, widely considered to be one of the great archaeological finds of the 20th century.

Penned on parchment by an unknown scribe more than 2,000 years ago, the scroll fragment is one of humanity’s most precious documents — and so fragile that its custodians rarely permit it to be moved from the secure vault where it rests in complete darkness./.../