Modern technology met ancient text when imaging software showed a 2,000-year old Israeli scroll matches the modern Hebrew Bible’s Book of Leviticus.

As reported by The Associated Press, the scroll was discovered decades ago and has been kept in a storeroom thanks to being too brittle to open. According to researchers, that’s no longer a problem:

The passages from the Book of Leviticus, scholars say, offer the first physical evidence of what has long been believed: that the version of the Hebrew Bible used today goes back 2,000 years.

The discovery, announced in a Science Advances journal article by researchers in Kentucky and Jerusalem on Wednesday, was made using “virtual unwrapping,” a 3D digital analysis of an X-ray scan. Researchers say it is the first time they have been able to read the text of an ancient scroll without having to physically open it.

“You can’t imagine the joy in the lab,” said Pnina Shor of the Israel Antiquities Authority, who participated in the study.

The digital technology, funded by Google and the U.S. National Science Foundation, is slated to be released to the public as open source software by the end of next year.

The scroll was discovered 46 years ago inside an ancient synagogue that was destroyed in a fire. Preserved by the dry climate, it was left largely undamaged until researchers attempted to open it. Since 1970, it has set dormant, unreadable and unusable.

The experimental reading was requested last year by the man who discovered the scroll, Yosef Porath. AP reports he asked researchers at the Israel Antiquities Authority’s Dead Sea Scrolls preservation lab in Jerusalem to scan a box of scrolls. While Shor initially asked if Porath was “joking,” she agreed to do the scans.

[Shor] agreed, and a number of burned scrolls were scanned using X-ray-based micro-computed tomography, a 3D version of the CT scans hospitals use to create images of internal body parts. The images were then sent to William Brent Seales, a researcher in the computer science department of the University of Kentucky. Only one of the scrolls could be deciphered.

Using the “virtual unwrapping” technology, he and his team painstakingly captured the three-dimensional shape of the scroll’s layers, using a digital triangulated surface mesh to make a virtual rendering of the parts they suspected contained text. They then searched for pixels that could signify ink made with a dense material like iron or lead. The researchers then used computer modeling to virtually flatten the scroll, to be able to read a few columns of text inside.

“Not only were you seeing writing, but it was readable,” said Seales. “At that point we were absolutely jubilant.”

The scroll is expected to be of assistance in expanding the understanding of the Hebrew Bible. The famed Dead Sea Scrolls date back more than 1,700 years, but differ significantly from the modern Hebrew Bible, despite scholars’ belief that the Bible has changed little since the time of Christ. One scholar told AP after the recent discovery that “in 2,000 years, this text has not changed.”

The implications for other historical discoveries are also significant, according to Tel Aviv University’s Noam Mizrahi. “It’s not only what was found, but the promise of what else it can uncover, which is what will turn this into an exciting discovery,” he told AP.