Dead Sea Scrolls

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Dead Sea Scrolls

The Dead Sea Scrolls are a group of 800-900 manuscripts found in caves at Qumran east of Jerusalem and north-west of the Dead Sea. The first scrolls were discovered in 1947 by a shepherd-boy who wandered into a cave after a stray goat. The texts are believed to have been hidden in eleven caves for safe-keeping prior to the destruction of Rome in A.D.70.

The scrolls are a collection of biblical and non-biblical documents comprising of the Hebrew Bible, (every book except Esther); the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha; rules for community life; biblical commentaries; a Testimonia, (a collection of verses from the Bible about the Messiah); a War Scroll; Temple Scroll; poetic and liturgical pieces; Thanksgiving Hymns; wisdom instructions; legal rulings; horoscopes and even a treasure map.1

Hailed as the archaeological find of modern times they were made out of papyrus or animal skins called gevil and written right to left with no punctuation. In fact there were no spaces between words they simply ran together. Written in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek using ink made from carbon black and white pigments and using birds feathers as writing implements.

Various forms of dating methods were used including carbon-14 tests done on linen wrappings, palaeographic, coins and pottery found and scribal. The scrolls were dated from approximately 250 BC to 68 AD. Coming from the late second Temple period, the time when Jesus lived, they are older than any other surviving biblical manuscripts. Preceding this a document called the Nash Papyrus was the oldest biblical document which was dated to the 1st or 2nd century and contained the Ten Commandments. The scrolls contained copies of Isaiah which were almost 1000years older than ...

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...3 August 2007.

“Biblical Archaeological Society”; www.bib-arch.org/deadseascrolls/bswbDSSHomePage.asp ; retrieved 16 September 2007.

“Cross Currents”; www.crosscurrents.org/deadsea.htm ; retrieved 21 August 2007

“Dead Sea Scrolls Foundation”; www.deadseascrollsfoundation.com/commentary.htm ; retrieved 16 September 2007.

“Info Please”; www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0193627.html ; retrieved 13 August 2007.

“International Bible Society”; www.ibs.org/bibles/about/12.php ; retrieved 16 September 2007.

“The Jewish Roman World of Jesus”; www.religiousstudies.uncc.edu/jdtabor/dss.html ; retrieved 13 August 2007.

“The World of The Scrolls – Library of Congress, Washington, DC”; www.ibiblio.org/expo/deadsea.scrolls.exhibit/intro.html ; retrieved 13 August 2007.

“Wikipedia”; www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_sea_scrolls ; retrieved 13 August 2007.

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