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.

I don't concede that there is a significant difference between the scrolls versus other nouns referring to parts of the causal chain.

However, if you want to make the distinction, there are innumerable examples of similar usage, where written material is said to reveal something.

"these pages revealed the power of words to us as though for the first time"

"The book revealed to me a whole frightening world"

"The alchemists really believed that the Emerald Tablet revealed truths too powerful for most people to handle"

"Aside from the joke, the letter revealed his youthful trait of uttering labored, high-sounding but unsubstantial phrases"

But why exactly are you fixated on the idea that written things can't act, while apparently pretty much any other abstract or inanimate object can?

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.

The most HN of comment threads.