More than 2,000 years after they were written, the Dead Sea Scrolls are going on-line as part of an effort to better preserve ancient texts and let more people see them than ever before.

The high-tech initiative, which was announced Wednesday, will also reveal texts that were not previously visible to the naked eye.

“Over the next two years,” CNN reports that, “the Israel Antiquities Authority will digitally photograph and scan every bit of crumbling parchment and papyrus that makes up the scrolls, which include the oldest written record of the Bible’s Old Testament.”

Eventually, the images will be posted on the Internet for anyone to see.

Pnina Shor, the head of treatment and conservation at the Antiquities Authority, is quoted as saying, “these are the earliest copies of the Bible ever found … The Bible is sacred to us and to you and to all the monotheistic religions, and therefore (the scrolls) are national treasures and world treasures, and therefore it is our duty to preserve them at least for 2,000 years more.”

It is widely accepted that the first set of Dead Sea Scrolls was discovered in 1947 by a Bedouin shepherd who traveled into a cave in the Judean Desert to search for a lost sheep or goat. The texts were discovered wrapped in linen inside earthenware jars.

Afterwards, 11 caves were found to contain the scrolls – some that dated back more than 2,000 years. The texts reveal accounts about life in the Holy Land around the time of Jesus, in the early days of Christianity, which was a time of great upheaval for the Jewish people.”

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