Dead Sea scrolls to Hit the WWW – courtesy of Google

Google and Israel announced that will be teaming up to give researchers and the public the first comprehensive and searchable database of the scrolls.

The scrolls represent a 2,000-year-old collection of Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek archive that shed light on Judaism during biblical times and the origins of Christianity.

The announcement follows in the wake of years of complains by experts that access to the scrolls has been too limited.

Once online, anyone will be able to peruse exact copies of the original scrolls as well as an English translation of the text on their computer — for free.

Officials stated that the collection, which is expected to be perusable within months, will feature sections that have been made more legible thanks to high-tech infrared technology.

"We are putting together the past and the future in order to enable all of us to share it," said Pnina Shor, an official with Israel's Antiquities Authority.

The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in the late 1940s in caves in the Judean Desert and are considered one of the greatest finds of the last century.

After the initial discovery, tens of thousands of fragments were found in 11 caves nearby. Some 30,000 of these have been photographed by the antiquities authority, along with the earlier finds. Together, they make up more than 900 manuscripts.

For decades, access to 500 scrolls was limited to a handful of scholar-editors with exclusive authorization from Israel to assemble the jigsaw puzzle of fragments, translate, and publish them.

That changed in the early 1990s when much of the previously unpublished text was brought out in book form.

But even now, access for researchers is largely restricted at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, where the originals are preserved in a dark, temperature-controlled room.