> reveal, v. ts., 1. make (previously unknown or secret information) known to others.
If I turn on a flashlight in a dark room, I reveal the contents of the room; but the flashlight also reveals the contents of the room; and at the lowest level, the light from the flashlight reveals the contents of the room. One could go even deeper, and say that the objects "reveal themselves", as the pigments in the objects react to the light by transmitting information about the objects to my eyes (unlike stealth planes or dark matter, which do not reveal themselves in response to light.)
A server can "reveal" information by transmitting it to you, in response to your request for it. A server reveals itself when it responds to a ping. A server that ignores pings and portscans is avoiding revealing itself.
Basically, any entity in the causal chain for information being produced—even a non-agentive one—seems capable of "revealing" in English.
(Perhaps you're thinking of "unveil"? That word implies that there's a thing external to the information—a veil/curtain—and requires an agentive entity to act upon it.)
My intuition for the verb 'reveal' is that the subject need be in some way active in the object being de-obscured. A server responding to pings reveals itself because handling incoming connections and sending packets in response is an active process. If the leather had undergone some sort of chemical process, say, an oxidation, and this had made the script apparent, I think it would be reasonable to say that the fragments were revealing the lettering. However, as far as I can see, nothing has changed about the scroll, nor even about our technological ability to interrogate it - rather, someone simply attempted to look closer than had been done so before.
Etymologically, 'reveal' is of the same heritage as 'unveil' - both are essentially analogies to the removing of a veil, and as such have the connotation of action. Only in a poetic context would I personally think it appropriate to use 'reveal' in a passive sense - as in your example of objects revealing themselves on exposure to light.
This is of course just wot i rekon. I would probably chose 'divulge' over 'reveal' in the title of the OP article.
> However, as far as I can see, nothing has changed about the scroll, nor even about our technological ability to interrogate it - rather, someone simply attempted to look closer than had been done so before.
I believe one common usage of "reveal" is that an autostereogram ("Magic Eye" picture) reveals a 3D image when you focus on it correctly. Nothing about the picture changes; nothing about your eyes change, either, really. It's just "looking closer." But the 3D object was obscure, and now it's been... revealed. Revealed by what? By whom? Not too clear.
I guess, in the Dead-Sea-Scroll-fragments case, it actually is clear: it was revealed by a microscope.
the light is the noun that acts to reveal the feat.
the dust is the noun that acts to reveal riders.
the air is the noun that acts to reveal devastation.
the spark is the noun that acts to reveal the spectrum.
In none of those examples were the feet, rider, devastation or spectrum the nouns that the verb reveal refers to as acting.
Reveal can be used as a verb, but in the title in question, the noun is Dead Sea Scrolls not "the Professor, the investigation, or the scanner" that did the revealing. The Dead Sea Scrolls did not act on their own to reveal something, they were acted upon.
All those examples show writing revealing an idea, not the text itself appearing.
The structure of the original sentence is just harder to parse at first glance because it's missing words or punctuation, or written in the wrong order.
"Text revealed on Dead Sea Scroll fragments thought to be blank" is much easier to read.
