Dead Sea Scrolls

1346 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Gospels dead sea scrolls

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 ...

... middle of paper ...

...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.

Show More
Related

  • Sumerian DBQ: Contribution Of Mesopotamians To Society

    368 Words  | 1 Pages

    Cuneiform was the first ever form of writing. The Sumerians were the main inventors of this writing. The symbol as we know them now consist of lines and wedges. One of the

    Read More

  • Flood of Epic of Gilgamesh and Book of Genesis of the Holy Bible

    724 Words  | 2 Pages

    He compares the use of this phrase and the structure of each section to the stone tablets written in cuneiform script. Many of these tablets have been discovered and they date to the third millenium BC.

    Read More

  • Compare And Contrast Egypt And Mesoamerica

    1089 Words  | 3 Pages

    Egyptian hieroglyphs were carved in stone, and later hieratic script was written on papyrus. However, Olmec glyphs was discovered on cylinders. Hence, Egyptians and Olmec had different types of writing, and different places to write.

    Read More

  • Women in the Dead Sea Scrolls

    2189 Words  | 5 Pages

    Since the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the Qumran caves, the lives of a now deceased society has been placed under the microscope. With the amount of work archaeologists and manuscript scholars have committed themselves to accomplish, more information on these Qumranites has been learned. Scholars have been able to determine that they were a Jewish sect, while also learning that they were a Jewish sect and obtaining their Biblical canon. The majority of scholars have associated the sect of Qumran with the Essenes due to their similarities. Though much was not found at the beginning of the excavations concerning women, it has become a matter in which many scholars are seeking more to know. Further archaeological findings have led to knowing more information about the Qumranite women.

    Read More

  • Reading the Old Testament

    1182 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Old Testament and the Bible itself has been studied extensively for centuries. Archeologists and Scholars have labored and pondered over texts trying to decipher its clues. It does not matter how many times the Old Testament has been studied there will always be something new to learn about it or the history surrounding it. In the book Reading the Old Testament: an Introduction, the author Lawrence Boadt presents us with a few different authors of the Old Testament that used different names for God and had a unique insight into the texts. These four sources are titled P for priests, E for Elohim, J for Jehovah, and Y for Yahweh (95). These four unique sources help us realize that there is more than one author of the Pentateuch. These authors took the text and adapted for their culture. This independent source is used by scholars to help gain insight into what was behind the texts of the bible so we are not left with an incomplete picture of what went into the creation of the bible. Julius Wellhausen used these four sources to publish a book to able us to better understand the sources and to give it credibility with the Protestant scholars at the time (Boadt 94). These sources that is independent of the bible as in the DVD Who Wrote the Bible? and the Nova website aide in shedding light on the history that surrounded the writers who wrote the text and what inspired them to write it in the first place. The DVD shows the discovery of The Dead Sea Scrolls and the extensive history of the texts and all its sources in an effort to try to find exactly who wrote the bible (Who Wrote). These scrolls have aided scholars immensely by giving us some of the oldest known manuscripts of the bible in the world today. It shows that the bible w...

    Read More

  • The Bible: The Tanakh, And The Hebrew Bible

    1471 Words  | 3 Pages

    The most highly referenced and revered as sacred are The King James Version, considered a masterpiece of English literature, The Tanakh, or Hebrew Bible, The Aprocrypha, the books believed left out of some bibles, The Vulgate, the Latin Bible used for centuries by the Roman Catholic religion, and The Septuagint, the first ancient Greek translation of the Tanakh (Geisler and Nix 15, McCallum 4). The Bible is considered a sacred text by three major world religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Many believers consider it to be the literal truth. Others treat it with great respect, but believe that it was written by human beings and, thus is often contradictory in its tenets.

    Read More

  • Uncovering the Dead Sea Scrolls

    1295 Words  | 3 Pages

    Until 1946 there was little assumption that additional knowledge could be uncovered regarding the Holy Scriptures however through the discovery of ancient scrolls excavated in a settlement located near the Dead Sea, more details have become available to historians regarding both the first century Jewish and Christian communities. Uncovered were several hundred scrolls that have now become known as the Dead Sea Scrolls.

    Read More

  • The Dead Sea Scrolls and The Gospel Of John

    2039 Words  | 5 Pages

    The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls has been hailed by people of many religious and cultural backgrounds as the greatest discovery of manuscripts to be made available to modern scholars in our time and has dramatically altered our understanding of the origins of Christianity. Perhaps the most fundamental reexamination brought about by the Scrolls is that of the Gospel of John. The Fourth Gospel originally accepted as a product of second century Hellenistic composition is now widely accepted as a later first century Jewish writing that may even contain some of the oldest traditions of the Gospels . The discovery of the scrolls has led to the discussion of undeniable and distinct parallels between the ideas of the society at Qumran and those present in the Gospel of John.

    Read More

  • Dead Sea Scrolls Essay

    556 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Dead Sea Scrolls have been called the greatest manuscript find of all time. Discovered between 1947 and 1956, the Dead Sea Scrolls comprise some 800 documents but in many tens of thousands of fragments. The Scrolls date from somewhere between 250 B.C. to 68 A.D. and were written in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek; they contain Biblical works, prayers and legal texts and sectarian documents.This priceless collection of ancient manuscripts is invaluable to our understanding of the history of Judaism, the development of the Hebrew Bible, and the beginnings of Christianity. When Mount Vesuvius erupted, it not only demolished Pompeii, but also the nearby Roman settlement of Herculaneum. Centuries later, hundreds of scrolls were uncovered in the area 1752, but many were too damaged by age and burns to risk unrolling. Thanks to one of the world’s most sensitive

    Read More

  • The Egyptian Book of the Dead

    611 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Book was originally intended as a set of spells and incantations meant to insure safe passage for the soul of a deceased person into the Underworld. Some of the ending chapters include instructions on not dying a second time, meaning how not to die in the underworld and thus having no chance of being reborn or living a full afterlife. The original text--at least, the bits and pieces that modern scholars possess--consists of a set of hymns, beginning with the Hymn to Osiris. This hymn is meant to call up the king of the underworld and make him aware of the presence of the soul. After summoning Osiris, the presiding priest would begin a series of ceremonies designed to give the spirit all the faculties it possessed in life, such as speech, movement of the limbs, internal organ functions, and sight. After these rites were completed, the corpse was removed to the tomb where prophetic portions of the Book were read.

    Read More

  • Cuneiform

    469 Words  | 1 Pages

    The earliest writing in Mesopotamia was a picture writing invented by the Sumerians who wrote on clay tablets using long reeds. The script the Sumerians invented and handed down to the Semitic peoples who conquered Mesopotamia in later centuries, is called cuneiform, which is derived from two Latin words: cuneus , which means "wedge," and forma , which means "shape." This picture language, similar to but more abstract than Egyptian hieroglyphics, eventually developed into a syllabic alphabet under the Semites (Assyrians and Babylonians) who eventually came to dominate the area.

    Read More

  • The Book of Hebrews

    1359 Words  | 3 Pages

    The book of Hebrews is directed at Christians, but it places an emphasis on those that come from Jewish descendants. This part of the Bible was written after the ascension of Christ at about A.D. 30 and before the temple in Jerusalem was destroyed in A.D. 70. It is believed Hebrews was written before the destruction of the Jerusalem because it does not include a mention of that event. This estimation in terms of when Hebrews was written based on the content. Hebrews is written in a form similar to a letter. The author of Hebrews has never been established for certain, but it has been referenced as The Epistle of Paul to the Hebrews (McCruden, 2013).

    Read More

  • Vienna Bible Codex Analysis

    698 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Vienna Genesis is a well-preserved biblical codex. The popularity of the codex followed with the spread of Christianity. The Vienna Genesis for the Jacob Wrestling the Angels and Rebecca and Eliezer at the Well were both made during the early 6th century CE out of tempera, gold, and silver on a painted purple vellum. Early rolls were made of papyrus for long manuscripts, but by the Hellenistic period vellum was used. Since the writing was not scratched off and the paint did not flake off like the papyrus scrolls, people were able to carry around scrolls from place to place. The skin was thought to be more flexible and the handwriting was able to endure longer time periods than papyrus. When paint melted the collagen on the animal skin it created a raised bed for the paint,

    Read More

  • Hieroglyphic Essay

    1022 Words  | 3 Pages

    Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic writing is one the oldest and most interesting forms of written language developed. There is evidence of its use from before 3200 BCE and Egyptian hieroglyphs remained in use for over 3,500 years. The Egyptian name for hieroglyphs translates to “language of the gods,” although the term hieroglyph actually came from Greek words meaning “sacred carving,” which the Greeks used to define the writing found on Egyptian monuments and temples (Ancient Egypt, Hieroglyphics, n.d.).

    Read More

  • Medieval Church Visit

    1196 Words  | 3 Pages

    This specific hymnarium is a manuscript with collection of hymns. Hand-written on lamb-skin parchment, as ink monks used juices of berries. Manuscripts like these and paintings using the same type of paper, are among the most common to survive from the middle ages. The term manuscript comes from the Latin hand-written. Below there is a picture showing the book itself and an inscription explaining the meaning, purpose and procedure follow to fabricate this particular type of

    Read More

More about Dead Sea Scrolls

Open Document