The Dead Sea Scrolls, which include the world’s oldest known biblical manuscripts, are now available online through a cooperative effort between the Israel Museum, where they are housed, and Google.

The Dead Seas Scrolls Digital Project will allow users to examine the Second Temple-era manuscripts at an unprecedented level of detail

Archaeologists say they have discovered a monument similar to Stonehenge near the ancient British stone circle, dubbing it the most exciting find at the site for 50 years.

The structure is said to be like a wooden version of the world-famous collection of giant stones on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, south-west England.

“This is probably the first major ceremonial monument that has been found in the past 50 years or so,” said Vince Gaffney, a professor from the University of Birmingham, who is leading the archaeological dig. “It will completely change the way we think about the landscape around Stonehenge.”

A manuscript found in a remote Ethiopian monastery could be the oldest illustrated Christian work in the world, experts have claimed.

Originally thought to be from around the 11th century, new carbon dating techniques place the Garima Gospels between 330 and 650 AD.

The 1,600 year-old texts are named after a monk, Abba Garima, who arrived in Ethiopia in the fifth century.

According to legend, he copied out the Gospels in just one day after founding the Garima Monastery, near Adwa in the north of the country.

Israel on Thursday announced the discovery of a 2,000-year-old pagan altar at the site where plans for a new hospital wing have come under fire from ultra-Orthodox Jews who fear bones found there may be of Jews.

It was discovered as the IAA was overseeing development of a hospital wing designed to withstand rockets fired from the nearby Gaza Strip by Palestinian militants.

Students and university officials started getting e-mails last year in which a prominent Judaic studies scholar seemed to make a startling confession: He had committed plagiarism.

The messages, it turned out, were a hoax. Prosecutors filed criminal charges, saying a lawyer sent the messages to tarnish the professor, his father’s rival.

The court case has drawn attention to issues both ancient (the origin of the Dead Sea Scrolls) and decidedly modern (phony online identities).

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) — Much of the world knows Petra, the ancient ruin in modern-day Jordan that is celebrated in poetry as “the rose-red city, ‘half as old as time,’” and which provided the climactic backdrop for “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.”

But far fewer know Madain Saleh, a similarly spectacular treasure built by the same civilization, the Nabateans.

That’s because it’s in Saudi Arabia, where conservatives are deeply hostile to pagan, Jewish and Christian sites that predate the founding of Islam in the 7th century.

But now, in a quiet but notable change of course, the kingdom has opened up an archaeology boom by allowing Saudi and foreign archaeologists to explore cities and trade routes long lost in the desert.

JERUSALEM — In a crowded laboratory painted in gray and cooled like a cave, half a dozen specialists embarked this week on a historic undertaking: digitally photographing every one of the thousands of fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls with the aim of making the entire file — among the most sought-after and examined documents on earth — available to all on the Internet. [video]

A tablet with 87 lines of Hebrew that scholars believe dates from the decades just before the birth of Jesus is causing a quiet stir in biblical and archaeological circles, especially because it may speak of a messiah who will rise from the dead after three days.

According to this article, “If such a messianic description really is there, it will contribute to a developing re-evaluation of both popular and scholarly views of Jesus, since it suggests that the story of his death and resurrection was not unique but part of a recognized Jewish tradition at the time.”

Yet the Old Testament includes hundreds of prophecies regarding the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Islamic authorities responsible for Haram as-Sharif, known to Jews as Temple Mount, said digging a trench was necessary to replace 40-year-old electrical cables. They called the Israeli group’s charges on Thursday “sheer propaganda.”

Following a long quest in search of King Herod’s tomb, an archaeologist announced Tuesday that he found what appears to be the ornate remains of the famous Roman era king’s burial site on the edge of the Judean Desert.

Several prominent scholars who were interviewed in a bitterly contested documentary that suggests that Jesus and his family members were buried in a nondescript ancient Jerusalem burial cave have now revised their conclusions, including the statistician who claimed that the odds were 600:1 in favor of the tomb being the family burial cave of Jesus of Nazareth, a new study on the fallout from the popular documentary shows.

Just as freshly sprouted daffodils indicate the imminent arrival of spring, so the pop culture’s yearly discovery (and exploitation) of Jesus Christ heralds the upcoming celebration of the Easter holiday.

Attempts to debunk Christianity have become traditional Easter-season fare in recent years.

In a surreal moment on “Larry King Live” earlier this week, the film’s producer, James Cameron (of “Titanic” fame), told us with a straight face that we should all be thankful that we now have tangible evidence that Jesus existed. Actually, no serious historian of biblical antiquity has ever doubted that there was a historical Jesus.

Claims that the burial site of Jesus, his wife and son have been found in an ancient family cemetery in Jerusalem have been criticised by researchers as fanciful.