Opening of the Scrolls

By Sandi Dolbee

UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

June 30, 2007

BALBOA PARK – Christine DeCoup's mind wandered as she looked at the leather fragments written by a biblical scribe more than 2,000 years ago.

EDUARDO CONTRERAS / Union-Tribune Michael Moore (center), a professor at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, spoke to a group from Canyon View Christian Fellowship in Tierrasanta on the opening day of the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit at the San Diego Natural History Museum.

“I could just picture him actually writing it out on that page,” she said. “I thought, 'What would he think now?' ”

Her younger sister, Katie, nodded her head. “That it would be all so famous,” she said.

“And a display in a museum,” added their mother, Linda.

After three years of planning, San Diego's first exhibition of the Dead Sea Scrolls opened yesterday to visitors from San Diego to Georgia, who pronounced it somewhere between “fascinating” and “fantastic.”

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