Greek abbreviations, contractions and ligatures.
John William Donaldson
The British Library has a collection of over a thousand Greek manuscript volumes. Thanks to a generous grant from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, the British Library has made the digitized version of its Greek manuscripts freely available online at www.bl.uk/manuscripts .
The Great Isaiah Scroll (1QIsaa) is now available for Biblical scholars to view online. It is a project of The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, and powered by Google technology.
The Dead Sea Srolls available for free viewing online are:
(1) The Great Isaiah Scroll (1QIsaa) – 1QIsaa is one of the original seven Dead Sea Scrolls discovered in Qumran in 1947. It is the largest (734 mm) and best preserved of all the biblical scrolls – http://dss.collections.imj.org.il/isaiah
(2) The Temple Scroll (11Q19) – 11Q19 was discovered in 1956 in Cave 11, located about 2 km north of Khirbet Qumran. The manuscript is written in Hebrew in the square Herodian script of the late Second Temple Period (the first half of the first century AD), on extremely thin animal skin (one-tenth of a millimeter), making it the thinnest parchment scroll ever found in the caves of Qumran – http://dss.collections.imj.org.il/temple
(3) The War Scroll (1QM) – 1QM is one of the seven original Dead Sea Scrolls discovered in Qumran in 1947. It contains 19 columns (originally there were at least twenty), of which the first 14–19 lines (out of at least 21–22) are preserved – http://dss.collections.imj.org.il/war
(4) The Community Rule Scroll (1QS) – 1QS, formerly known as the “Manual of Discipline,” is the major section of one of the first seven scrolls discovered in Cave 1 at Qumran in 1947 – http://dss.collections.imj.org.il/community .
(5) The Commentary of Habakkuk Scroll (1QpHab): it is a relative complete scroll (1.48 m long) and one of the seven original Dead Sea Scrolls discovered in caves of Qumran in 1947. It interprets the first two chapters of the book of Habakkuk and comprises 13 columns written in Hebrew, in a square Herodian script. However, the tetragrammaton, the four-letter, ineffable name of God, is written in ancient Hebrew characters, unlike the rest of the text – http://dss.collections.imj.org.il/habakkuk
The high resolution photos, taken by Ardon Bar-Hama, are up to 1,200 MP, almost 57 times more than Canon EOS 5D Mark II (21.1 Megapixels) camera, so viewers can see even the most minute details in the parchment. To protect the scrolls from damage, the photographer used ultraviolet-protected flash tubes to light the scrolls for 1/4000th of a second.