First visitors are awed by Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit
Friday, January 21, 2005
By ROY HOFFMAN
Staff Reporter
Quietly, almost reverently, the first visitors to the new Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit filed into the Gulf Coast Exploreum Science Center on Thursday, making their way to softly illuminated display cases where 2000-year-old goatskin parchments held ancient Hebrew and Aramaic texts.
The short opening day was designated for "walk-ins" who could buy same-day tickets at the counter and local clergy. The mood was a mix of intellectual curiosity and religious awe.
Lots of people of different religious backgrounds are then quoted. Here's my favorite:
On the second floor of the exhibit, Kevin Hurt, the Exploreum's theater manager was giving computer-generated virtual tours of the ancient temple in Jerusalem. Just outside the the ater was a little girl, Carly Cefalu, a 2-year-old with a red ribbon in her sandy hair, who skipped about asking, "Where's Jesus?"
Carly had come to the Exploreum with her parents, David Cefalu and Sheryl Cefalu, as they had been driving from Pensacola to New Orleans and decided to detour into downtown Mobile.
"We told her Jesus is the word," said David Cefalu, "and they found the word in the caves."
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