The press is just now reporting the March purchase of two fragments of Leviticus by Hanan Eshel. They are quite small and really insignificant in light of everything else previously found, EXCEPT that it reminds everyone that there must be more scrolls hidden (there certainly are). There is no hint that the Bedouin who sold the fragments has any more to offer, or that he has revealed the exact location of the find. Rather than repeating what you can find in the regular news reports (MSNBC, USA Today) or the blogs (Ralph the Sacred River, Biblical Theology), I’ll contribute a couple of photos of the Nahal Arugot, where the fragments were allegedly found.
The Nahal Arugot is a very large canyon in the Judean Wilderness that flows into the Dead Sea at En Gedi (the En Gedi kibbutz is the green patch at the bottom of the photo). Most of the biblical “Dead Sea Scrolls” were found in caves near Qumran, about 20 miles (30 km) to the north. Other scrolls were found in some of the canyons (wadis) both north and south of the Arugot. BTW, the Arugot is a great canyon for hiking, especially in the winter!
