Ancient Torah scroll exhibition in "Bible Belt" expected to draw many visitors

An exhibition of the ancient Dead Sea scrolls is to open this week in Mobile, in the US state of Alabama. In the so-called "Bible Belt" of the United States, where a Ten Commandments monument and the "Passion of the Christ" film drew widespread interest and support, officials at the Gulf Coast Exploreum Science Center expect at least 160,000 people will view the scrolls during a 95-day showing. The scrolls, excavated from caves at Qumran, near the Dead Sea in the Judean Desert, are the oldest texts of the Hebrew Bible in the original language. They were discovered in the late 1940s and early 1950s, stored in pottery jars.