THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS
1, The Dead Sea Scrolls are a large number of ancient parchments and texts that were written in the 400 years between 300 BC and 100 AD.
2 The scrolls are of great significance because on them is written some of the oldest known copies of New Testament texts that were later included in the Hebrew Bible. There are also some Jewish Scriptures, letters and religious writings of the time.
3 The first of the Dead Sea Scrolls were found accidentally by a group of local Bedouin shepherds in 1946. Originally they discovered seven ancient parchment scrolls that had been hidden in clay jars in a cave, at Qumran in Israel close to the Dead Sea.
4 It was not until 1951 that a team of archaeologists began to excavate the cave system around Qumran to look for other ancient scrolls. In all, 982 different texts were discovered in eleven caves in the area.
5 Most of the texts were written in Hebrew, with some in Aramaic and a few in Greek. Most were written on parchment, with some on papyrus and one on copper.
6 It is believed that the scrolls were hidden in the caves around 70 AD when the Romans attacked and destroyed Jerusalem. Initially it was thought that they had belonged to an ancient Jewish sect called the Essenes, but recently scholars think that they may have been the scrolls from the Temple in Jerusalem.
7 Many of the manuscripts had deteriorated over the centuries and were just fragments. In one cave alone there were about 15,000 fragments which the historians have spent over forty long years trying to piece together. The task is still not complete.
8 About 40% of the scrolls contain texts from the New Testament.
9 Partial or complete copies of every book in the Bible (except the book of Esther) have been identified from the scrolls.
10 Many of the ancient scrolls are now housed in the Shrine of the Book at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. Here they are kept at the best temperature and humidity conditions to preserve them for the future. The Copper Scroll that was found is on display in the Amman Museum in Jordan.
