The Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit opens Friday at the Reagan Library

The Dead Sea Scrolls and about 200 related artifacts will be featured in an exhibit opening Friday at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library & Museum in Simi Valley.

The Dead Sea Scrolls, which are believed to date from between 250 B.C. They are Jewish manuscripts discovered between 1947 and 1956 in 11 caves around the Israeli-administered ancient archaeological site of Qumran.

Many of the scrolls have not been seen outside Israel, Reagan Library officials said. Some of the scrolls were last seen in California in 2015.

The Reagan Library exhibit is completely different from the previous exhibit at the California Science Center in Los Angeles, Melissa Giller, a spokeswoman for the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute, said. She saw the earlier exhibition.

The Reagan Library is the only West Coast venue for the exhibit, Giller told reporters Wednesday.

The exhibition consists of different areas with artifacts such as the Magdala Stone, which features carved images depicting the Jerusalem Temple. The stone served as a ceremonial piece of furniture upon which sacred scrolls were placed.

Other artifacts include pottery and other relics from early Christianity and Judaism.

Also on display is a reconstruction of the Sea of Galilee boat made of oak and cedar. Although no one claims that Jesus used the ship, it is nicknamed the “Jesus Boat.”

The 27-foot-long boat in the exhibit is made from wood from the original first-century ship.

“The boat was discovered by chance during a drought and it took seven years for the excavation to be successful,” said Risa Levitt, executive director of the Bible Lands Museum in Jerusalem.

The centerpiece of the exhibition is a gallery for the Dead Sea Scrolls, which are carefully stored in low lighting and humidity and at a constant temperature of 70 degrees Fahrenheit. The scrolls contain text from the Hebrew Bible, Christianity’s Old Testament, and include passages from books such as Exodus, Deuteronomy and Proverbs.

For each scroll, the original fragments were carefully arranged under glass. Next to each scroll are large digital images, including an infrared image that removes the dark, yellowish background of the parchment to make the black ink text in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek easier to read.

One scroll, which is a single large fragment, contains psalms not found in the Hebrew Bible, Levitt said.

A psalm is written in the first person. It appears to be King David talking about how he became ruler of Israel despite being the youngest son and neither the tallest nor the most attractive among him and his brothers, she said.

“Other scrolls match the contents of today’s Hebrew Bible, with minor differences, such as missing verses in the Bible,” Levitt said as she stood among the ancient documents.

“There is nothing controversial. “The main content is strikingly similar,” she said.

“I find it humbling to realize that texts important to modern traditions have such an ancient history and have been copied and preserved for thousands of years,” Levitt said.

The Dead Sea Scrolls consist of 2,500 fragments that scholars put together like a puzzle in the mid-20th century, said Joe Uziel, head of the Dead Sea Scrolls Department at the Israel Antiquities Authority.

The scholars at the Rockefeller Archaeological Museum in Jerusalem had no image to guide them, but they assembled the scrolls without modern technology and under conditions that would not be permitted today, Uziel said.

He pointed to the exhibit’s photo, which shows a scholar smoking a cigarette, risking damaging the scroll fragments he is examining. The early scholars actually assembled the scrolls using tape that was later removed by authorities, Uziel said.

While discussing the science associated with the scrolls, Uziel referenced depictions of modern technology. One device was a scanner that allowed experts to read the pages of a charred, crumpled scroll found during a 1970 excavation of an Israeli synagogue.

The scroll would have fallen apart if anyone had tried to break the pages apart, Uziel said.

Instead, the scroll was scanned and virtually unwrapped in Israel, Uziel said. The agency sent the raw data to the University of Kentucky for analysis.

It turned out to be a version of Leviticus almost identical to the book as it appears in today’s Bible, Uziel said. The scrolls date back to the third century and were used until the synagogue was destroyed in the sixth century, he said.

The Reagan Library is located at 40 Presidential Drive, Simi Valley. To purchase tickets to the museum and exhibit, go to www.ReaganLibrary.com/DeadSeaScrolls.

Dave Mason covers East County for the Ventura County Star. He can be reached at [email protected] or 805-437-0232.