From The Toronto Star:

A segment of the Dead Sea Scrolls -- now at the Royal Ontario Museum.

In times of turmoil, it is best to reflect on what unites us, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty says, and that’s what the Dead Sea Scrolls can do.

“My hope is that people of all cultures and faiths will come together to marvel at these scrolls,” McGuinty said today at a preview of the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition opening at the Royal Ontario Museum this weekend.

The 2,000-year-old scrolls include the oldest known copy of the Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament. As such, they are considered sacred texts for the world’s three major religions — Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

Too often, McGuinty says, we focus on what separates us.

“What is important is what we have in common,” he said.

Eight copies of the scroll will be on display until October, when they will be swapped with eight different scroll fragments.

The exhibit was two years in the making, and marks the relaunch of the ROM after an extensive renovation that included the controversial addition of the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal to its Bloor St. façade.

ROM chief executive William Thorsell described the scrolls today as “one of the great archaeological finds of the 20th Century,” and one of the most significant displays ever to come to the museum.

Already, he said, communities across Ontario are planning bus trips to Toronto, just to see the scrolls.

Besides the scrolls, there are numerous artifacts from the Dead Sea and Jerusalem on display to put the scrolls into context.

“It’s a show about the world from which they came,” said ROM curator Risa Levitt Kohn.

There will also be children’s activities, and more modern art to help visitors put the ancient texts and artifacts into a contemporary context, she said.

The scrolls currently on display are fragments from the books of Genesis, Daniel and Psalms, plus five non-biblical texts: the Book of War, a lease agreement, fragments describing a messianic apocalypse, apocryphal psalms that may have been hymns, and the Damascus Covenant describing a community that fled to Judea.

The show continues until Jan. 3.

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