Now for a bit of really good news. New York Times reports from 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.
Wow. This is a huge spiritual and intellectual breakthrough, especially when you consider the historical acrimony over access to the scrolls by even top scholars. Jonathan Ben-Dov, a professor of biblical studies at the University of Haifa “said that it had long been very difficult for senior scholars to get access.” Once this project is completed [within two years], he said with wonder, “every undergraduate will be able to have a detailed look at them from numerous angles.”
I wonder what those scrolls might tell us about the age of consent and “traditional marriage” at the time of Jesus? 
Full story at NYT.
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Crusty 08.27.08 at 10:31 am
Most scholars I know believe that there was no age of consent in that time as consent nearly always lay with the family patriarch. As soon as a girl reached menarche she was considered suitable for marriage. Within most Jewish sects she would often be married within a year or two. In Roman ruling society it could be as long as perhaps 5 years depending on political needs (Romance was never a critical element of marriage until just about the past century or two). So, ‘Traditional Marriage’? Well, it’s certainly not what we have today.
It is extremely exciting to see what will come out of this scrolls effort. My Hebrew is not quite passable, Koine somewhat better, but Arabic rough. Even so I’m excited to see them myself and look forward to what we learn when so many scholars throughout the world have access to them and are able to begin debating various elements included.