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At the show I not only looked at the displays, I also listened to the visitors around me and watched their actions. They spoke many languages, and most paid close attention to the displays and the video presentations that attempt to unfold before their eyes a long-gone world. Adults and children alike appeared somehow touched by a biblical world created for them through objects that in themselves have no biblical context.

The ROM took extra-ordinary care and curatorial skills to fill the large space in the ROM's basement display area, an awkward space with sharp angles and support beams. Guest curator is Risa Levit Kohn of the San Diego State University. She used about 200 artifacts lent to the ROM by the Israeli Antiquity Authority, the body responsible for circulating the Dead Sea scrolls to international institutions. Most of the items are archeological finds dating from the same period as the scrolls. They include everything from earthenware to silver coins, ritual vessels to pieces of masonry that fell from the Second Temple in Jerusalem at its destruction by the Romans in AD 70.

The eight pieces of scroll fragments in the exhibit seem almost insignificant in comparison to all the other items. Presented at the end of the displays, the scrolls are housed in special cases that protect them from light and all humidity. Yet, on looking at them one has a sense of something special. The neat, tiny Hebrew script written on pieces of parchment and papyrus, written by unknown scribes sometime between 150 BC and AD 150, appear almost miraculous in nature for simply having remained legible and having survived 2,000 years in desert caves. That they have contributed much to clarifying aspects of the Old Testament is just a bonus. Most importantly, though, they reflect the words of scripture that shape our lives and the world we live in to this day.

Two of the fragments have never before been seen anywhere. They were conserved especially for the ROM's display. A fragment from the Book of War dated between AD 20-50 is a non-biblical text, discovered in Cave 11 in 1956. The second piece is from the Book of Daniel dated between 50 BC and AD 50. It was found in Cave 4 in 1952.

What the curator has attempted to clarify with this display, and what the scrolls confirm, is that not all Jews thought alike before the Diaspora and that they belonged to several sects.

Scientists almost unanimously believed that the scrolls had been written by the Essenes, a sect that believed in an austere, secluded life, which included celibacy. But over the years a conclusion has been reached that not just one group was involved in the scrolls' creation. There are many apocryphal writings, such as the Barki Nafshi from AD 1-30, also from Cave 4, which is described as one of the "unknown" psalms and contains the words, Bless, O my soul the Lord, a phrase found in several biblical psalms.

Rank was also part of the sects. The Sadducees consisted of the aristocracy and priesthood, who lived in the better parts of Jerusalem or other cities. The Pharisees were a learned group of lay leaders for the common people. In addition there were Jewish people who practiced only parts of the moral codes and cultural practices followed by the majority. In other words, Jews were as diverse then as they are now, just as Christians and Muslims follow a variety of practices that set them apart from each other within their respective religions that have a commonality in what is now called the Abrahamic tradition.

To give the visitor a taste of how Jewish life adapted to the conquerors of Judea, the display begins with daily life in the Hellenic town of Sepphoris. Then an area devoted to Jerusalem shows the Second Temple and explains that is was not so much a place of devotion, but a place to make sacrifice to God. One fraction of a piece of masonry that had once been placed at one of the entrances to the Temple bears a Greek script warning that non-Jews could be condemned to death if they dared enter, another piece with Hebrew script shows clearly it came from the Place of the Trumpeting on the Temple Mount.