Live Ninjas, Dead Scrolls

So I had the most AMAZING time last night with my friend Katana. I haven't seen her in more than two months, though we have kept in touch through video chat and the such. We went to go see the Dead Sea Scrolls at the Science Museam! It was amazing. I have heard that many people were disappointed with the exhibit, and I guess I can kinda see why. The posters/info boards were boring and took FOREVER to read, so I skipped most of them and just looked at the pictures. hehe. The scenery in the museum is nothing interesting. But hey, it is a museum! And about history of all things. What do you expect? NINJAS?! haha! I am joking. History is important and cool.

I thought the free audio tour was pretty groovy too. I learn things a lot better when people explain them to me, rather than having to read a ton of boring signs and not comprehending what is being said. So that was neat to see all the pottery, glassware, scroll jars, burial boxes, and a bunch of other artifacts that were found in the caves near Qumran. My favorite parts of this was the mascara bottle and the info and examples of how the scribes made ink from oil, flax seeds, ground rock, and a bunch of other stuff! All mixed together. WOW. It is super cool to see all the glassware bottles and how they are so small! How they made those things with the backwards technology they had I have NO idea.

The scrolls themselves were quite tiny fragments, which also disapoints most people. I had read up a TON about the scrolls before though, so this came as no suprise.
I am glad that some of the pieces are still being studied. The writing is SO small!!It was weird how you could see the scotch tape on them from the first archealogist who weren't careful enough! It ruined them. There was also a very terrible picture of a dude inspecting the scrolls holding a CIGARETTE! What are you trying to do people? BURN HISTORY?! Sad sad day. :\


I peered down into the glass, not sure what I was expecting to recognize since I could not understand the Hebrew and Aramaic language anyhoo, but made me all squirrly inside! But they do not cause butterflies in your stomach by just seeing all the artifacts. It is the audio tour and the writings that teach you what they mean, what they represent, and how this applies to us today that gives me the shivers.
What made me more so was pondering all of what the scrolls say and what they mean and what controversy they have caused in my mind...for example, I saw parts of the scrolls from Genesis, Leviticus, Enoch, and the Common Laws. How did we decide what books were supposed to be in the Bible? Like, the Catholic and Jewish Bibles have different books in them than our Christian Bible. Are any of the Bibles really correct? Or are all of them correct? What is the meaning of the Bible really? How do we KNOW if the books of the Bibles are divinely inspired? Or which ones are or aren't inspired by God? And the ones that aren't, shouldn't they still be in the Bible cause they are about the people of God?

The Catholic Bible has 7 more books than the "protestant" or Christian Bible has:
Tobit, Judith, 1 and 2 Maccabees, Wisdom, Sirach, and Baruch.
It also has portions added into Esther and Daniel! The Catholics consider these parts to be divinely inspired, why do we not?
The Hebrew/Jewish Bible (A.K.A. Tanakh) has extra parts too I think. I don't remember exactly what they are called though.

So the point is, with the discovery of these scrolls and the history they record...they record the history of God's chosen people! And since the OT books do the same, why are some recorded and included in the Bible and some not? Is it because they were not discovered yet? WHY IS THIS?! I want to know! It bothers me a LOT. When we are reading the Bible to better understand God, wouldn't these other books of history also allow us to better understand God? I mean, whether they are divinely inspired or not, they are still true accounts of stuff that happened. God was there when that happened too! He is EVERYWHERE! So shouldn't these books be available to us to research and study as well? Why do we study only the Bible intensely? Why not other books? Because of the divine inspiration that God caused them to be written down by? So then what? Like, aren't therer divine inspirations today too? I want to know why some books of history were attributed more important than others, why, and then how they got all put into a book that our culture of Chrisianity says we must read. I mean, sure, God says we must read and know His word as well. But is His word all that is written in the Bible? Or does it include other stuff too? Like, what He speaks to us nowadays?     ..?!?!?!?! grr................frustration .
Sigh....
These things I ponder.


So now to go on a random tangent about me and the ninja Katana. We spent so much time in the exhibit we never even got to go look at the other exhibits. Although afterward (15 min. til close!) we played on the geometric playground which was super fun. haha, lots of little cute kids that were giving us strange looks. :D
Then we went and giggled on top of some red blood cell chairs, which made me thinks of the lack of nucleus in them and the pedigrees of blood types that we have been learning this week in Bio. LOL! (another random tangent, I was writing a note today and noticed my exclamation strokes were overlapping into what looked like a orbital hybridization of pi bonds. DORK ALERT! haha!) So yeah, that was fun.
Then we went back to school and bought some food, though we were disappointed that they were out of orange chicken and egg rolls. Wow that cafeteria place takes SO long to make food! So after getting our hunger out of the way, we proceeded to be climbing ninjas around campus after dark. I cannot reveal all of our secrets, but the episodes included climbing walls, stairs, hills, a lightpost, door frames, trees, yelling at people from the tree, running from security guards, a "haunted" chapel, the sprinklers, and an expedition to an island. Laughing and giggling with gal friends is the best. I love you my ninja friend Katana!

So in summary, I now am in deep curiosity about the trustfulness of the Bible, and I really want to learn more. Perhaps I can find some time this week to talk to my OT prof about it. He seems pretty smart. I shall have to pray about it...if only I had time to research it more! Oh coveted time, how I dread you.
*I hear the scrolls are being scanned and put on Google! That will be sweetness for those laypeople like myself who seek to learn more. :)