The Words That Outlasted Empires

In 1979, archaeologist Gabriel Barkay was excavating ancient burial caves at Ketef Hinnom, just outside the walls of Jerusalem. Beneath centuries of rubble and debris, a young volunteer discovered two tiny silver scrolls, each no larger than a cigarette. They had lain hidden for twenty-six hundred years. When technicians at the Israel Museum spent three painstaking years unrolling the delicate metal, they found words inscribed in ancient Hebrew — the oldest surviving fragment of Scripture ever discovered.…