JERUSALEM — Israel’s Antiquities Authority and Google announced Tuesday they are joining forces to bring the Dead Sea Scrolls online, allowing widespread access to the ancient manuscripts for the first time.

The project will grant free, global access to the 2,000-year-old text — considered one of the greatest archaeological finds of the last century — by uploading high-resolution images that are exact copies of the originals. The first photographs are slated to be online within months.

The scrolls will be available in their original languages, Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek, and at first an English translation. Eventually other translations will be added and Google’s translation feature may also be incorporated. They will also be searchable.

Antiquities official Pnina Shor said the project will ensure the original 30,000 fragments that make up the scrolls are preserved while broadening access. The scrolls, which includes parts of the Hebrew Bible and treatises on communal living and apocalyptic war, have shed important light on Judaism and the origins of Christianity.

The scrolls were found in caves near the Dead Sea in the late 1940s.

The delicate scrolls are kept in dark, temperature-controlled rooms at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, where only four trained workers are permitted to handle the parchment and papyrus documents. Exposure to light risks damaging the scrolls.