I went to see the Dead Sea Scrolls yesterday at the Royal Ontario Museum. At first I wasn’t impressed. Little illegible fragments of papyrus—many in pieces so small they could have formed any number or words by arranging they differently—had been sandwiched between layers of protective mesh and secured behind several layers of plexiglass. Of the many scrolls found, a seemingly random smattering of biblical and extra-biblical passages was composed for visitors to the museum: a bit of Genesis, a few verses from a Psalm, excerpts from the Book of War, a couple lines from the Book of Daniel. The exhibit seemed so inconsequential, sort of like some long-forgotten schoolboy’s dictations. So what if some nameless person wrote a bunch of words on some parchments and tossed them into a cave somewhere in the Middle East?

Though the scribes probably regarded the words of the scrolls as words of truth, that the scrolls exist do not inherently imbue truth. The words Bart Simpson copies on the chalkboard at the beginning of each episode of the Simpsons are more indicative of the teacher’s wishful thinking than absolute certitude that Bart will swear off his mischievous behaviours. Irrespective of the truthfulness or the scrolls’ content, they demonstrate the fervency and zealousness of the people who created them. That someone felt the words written upon the scrolls deserved to be laboriously copied—regardless of any objective measure of the contents’ value—underscores just how important those words were to the copyists.

So how does this substantively affect my beliefs? Honestly, it doesn’t really. That passages interpreted from the fragments largely echo other ancient copies does little to establish the veracity of the original source. But it does remind me that there is a well established precedent of communities of people zealous about things thought but never proven to be true. And witnessing their example encourages me to also evaluate my devotion to the words they so faithfully copied. It is never with ultimate certainty that I can state the promises enshrined in the Dead Sea Scrolls are true. But to view the scrolls as emblematic of hope in the same promises I consider heartens my own faith.