Photographer Yair Medina, left, shows Pnina Shor, right, curator and Head of Dead Sea Scrolls Project at the Israel Antiquities Authority, IAA, scanned fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls on a computer screen, at the IAA offices at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, Monday, Sept. 26, 2011. – AP Photo

JERUSALEM: Two thousand years after they were written and decades after they were found in desert caves, some of the world-famous Dead Sea Scrolls are available online.

Israel’s national museum and the international web giant Google are behind the project, which put five scrolls online Monday. The scrolls include the biblical Book of Isaiah. Google’s technology allows surfers to search the scrolls for specific passages and translate them into English.

The scrolls available online were purchased by Israeli researchers between 1947 and 1967. They were originally found by Bedouin shepherds in the Judean Desert.

They are held at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.

Google is also working with Israel to make the first comprehensive and searchable database of the broader collection of scrolls.