In 1947, young Bedouin shepherds, searching for a lost goat in the Judean Desert, entered a cave and found pottery jars filled with ancient scrolls. That initial discovery by the Bedouins yielded seven scrolls and was the beginning of a search that lasted nearly a decade and eventually produced thousands of scroll fragments from eleven caves.

During those same years, archaeologists searching for a habitation close to the caves in the effort to identify the people who deposited the scrolls, excavated the Qumran ruin, a complex of structures located on a barren terrace between the cliffs where the caves were found and the Dead Sea, which is located in Israel and Jordan, about 15 miles east of Jerusalem and is 1300 feet below sea level.

Some of the scrolls found by Bedouin shepherds in 1947 were discovered in cylindrical pottery jars, which are unknown elsewhere. Many authorities consider the discovery of these unique vessels in the Qumran excavations as well as in the caves, as convincing evidence of the link between the settlement and the caves. These jars, like the other pottery vessels recovered at Qumran, were probably manufactured locally.

The Dead Sea Scrolls were written in the Semitic language of Aramaic between 250 B.C. and A.D. 68 and hidden in caves near Qumran, which some scholars think was an ancient Jewish settlement. The writings shed light on aspects of early Jewish religious and secular life during the era when Romans sacked Jerusalem, around A.D. 70, and as Christianity was dawning.

Since their discovery, for nearly half a century, the scrolls and the identity of the nearby settlement have been the object of great scholarly and public interest.

Since then, more scrolls have been discovered, in caves all along the Dead Sea. The scrolls at Qumran are the most important as far as Christians are concerned because they are the only ones throughout the Dead Sea region that pre-date or are contemporary with Jesus Christ.

In fact, they are the only original existing writings of Hebrew scripture that are as old or older than Jesus and John the Baptist. All the other Dead Sea Scrolls are later works, which bear the trademark of the Jewish Rabbinical School at Jamnia.

These scrolls were written after Christianity had converted great numbers of followers throughout Judea, the Roman Empire, Greece and the lands around the Mediterranean Sea.

Unlike the scrolls at Qumran, the later scrolls were written after the Romans had destroyed Herod’s temple in Jerusalem and had either killed or taken into Roman slavery millions of Jewish citizens. For the reason that these later Dead Sea Scrolls were all penned after these shattering events had taken place, but one cannot be certain that they were not written with an eye to counter and block the events and teachings that were swirling about them at the time.

The scrolls at Qumran, however, for the reason that they were written before any of these events occurred, give us an unbiased picture of the original state of Jewish scripture at the time of Jesus Christ.

They evidence us, that there was not just one rescension of the Hebrew scripture being used at the time of Christ. There were dozens. They show us that the Greek (Septuagint) Old Testament was used extensively in Judea, and without the onus that it later received from the Rabbinical scholars.
For all these reasons, and especially because the Qumran scrolls are the oldest known copies of Jewish scripture in existence, that Qumran and the sect that produced these scrolls are so vital to the study of Judaism and Christianity.

Facts about the Dead Sea Scrolls

? The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in eleven caves along the northwest shore of the Dead Sea between the years 1947 and 1956. The area is 13 miles east of Jerusalem and is 1300 feet below sea level. The mostly fragmented texts are numbered according to the cave that they came out of. They have been called the greatest manuscript discovery of modern times.

? Only Caves 1 and 11 have produced relatively intact manuscripts. Discovered in 1952, Cave 4 produced the largest find. About 15,000 fragments from more than 500 manuscripts were found.

? In all, scholars have identified the remains of about 825 to 870 separate scrolls.

? The Scrolls can be divided into two categories - biblical and non-biblical. Fragments of every book of the Hebrew canon (Old Testament) have been discovered except for the book of Esther.

? There are now identified among the scrolls, 19 copies of the Book of Isaiah, 25 copies of Deuteronomy and 30 copies of the Psalms.

? Prophecies by Ezekiel, Jeremiah and Daniel not found in the Bible are written in the Scrolls.

? The Isaiah Scroll, found relatively intact, is 1000 years older than any previously known copy of Isaiah. In fact, the scrolls are the oldest group of Old Testament manuscripts ever found.

? In the Scrolls are found never before seen psalms attributed to King David and Joshua.

? There are non-biblical writings along the order of commentaries on the Old Testament, paraphrases that expand on the Law, rule books of the community, war conduct, thanksgiving psalms, hymnic compositions, benedictions, liturgical texts, and sapiential (wisdom) writings.

? The Scrolls are for the most part, written in Hebrew, but there are many written in Aramaic. Aramaic was the common language of the Jews of Palestine for the last two centuries B.C. and of the first two centuries A.D. The discovery of the Scrolls has greatly enhanced our knowledge of these two languages. In addition, there are a few texts written in Greek.

? The Scrolls appear to be the library of a Jewish sect. The library was hidden away in caves around the outbreak of the First Jewish Revolt (66-70 A.D.) as the Roman army advanced against the rebel Jews.

? Near the caves are the ancient ruins of Qumran. They were excavated in the early 1950’s and appear to be connected with the scrolls.

? The Dead Sea Scrolls were most likely written by the Essenes during the period from about 200 B.C. to 68 C.E./A.D. The Essenes are mentioned by Josephus and in a few other sources, but not in the New testament. The Essenes were a strict Torah observant, Messianic, apocalyptic, baptist, wilderness, new covenant Jewish sect. They were led by a priest they called the “Teacher of Righteousness,” who was opposed and possibly killed by the establishment priesthood in Jerusalem.

? The enemies of the Qumran community were called the “Sons of Darkness”; they called themselves the “Sons of Light,” “the poor,” and members of “the Way.” They thought of themselves as “the holy ones,” who lived in “the house of holiness,” because “the Holy Spirit” dwelt with them.

? The last words of Joseph, Judah, Levi, Naphtali, and Abraham (the father of Moses) are written down in the Scrolls.

? One of the most curious scrolls is the Copper Scroll. Discovered in Cave 3, this scroll records a list of 64 underground hiding places throughout the land of Israel. The deposits are to contain certain amounts of gold, silver, aromatics, and manuscripts. These are believed to be treasures from the Temple at Jerusalem that were hidden away for safekeeping.

? The Temple Scroll, found in Cave 11, is the longest scroll. Its present total length is 26.7 feet (8.148 meters). The overall length of the scroll must have been over 28 feet (8.75m).

? The scrolls contain previously unknown stories about biblical figures such as Enoch, Abraham, and Noah. The story of Abraham includes an explanation why God asked Abraham to sacrifice his only son Isaac.

? The scrolls are most commonly made of animal skins, but also papyrus and one of copper. They are written with a carbon-based ink, from right to left, using no punctuation except for an occasional paragraph indentation. In fact, in some cases, there are not even spaces between the words.

? The Scrolls have revolutionized textual criticism of the Old Testament. Interestingly, now with manuscripts predating the medieval period, we find these texts in substantial agreement with the Masoretic text as well as widely variant forms.

? Some of the Dead Sea Scrolls actually appeared for sale on June 1, 1954 in the Wall Street Journal. The advertisement read: “The Four Dead Sea Scrolls: Biblical manuscripts dating back to at least 200 BC are for sale. This would be an ideal gift to an educational or religious institution by an individual or group. Box F206.”

? Although the Qumran community existed during the time of the ministry of Jesus, none of the Scrolls refer to Him, nor do they mention any of His follower’s described in the New Testament.

? The major intact texts, from Caves 1 & 11, were published by the late fifties and are now housed in the Shrine of the Book museum in Jerusalem.

? Since the late fifties, about 40% of the Scrolls, mostly fragments from Cave 4, remained unpublished and were inaccessible. It wasn’t until 1991, 44 years after the discovery of the first Scroll, after the pressure for publication mounted, that general access was made available to photographs of the Scrolls. In the November of 1991 the photos were published by the Biblical Archaeological Society in a nonofficial edition; a computer reconstruction, based on a concordance, was announced; the Huntington Library pledged to open their microfilm files of all the scroll photographs.

? The Dead Sea Scrolls enhance our knowledge of both Judaism and Christianity. They represent a non-rabbinic form of Judaism and provide a wealth of comparative material for New Testament scholars, including many important parallels to the Jesus movement. They show Christianity to be rooted in Judaism and have been called the evolutionary link between the two.

THE ANGEL SCROLL
September 29, 1999 - AP - Jerusalem

A religious text that has mysteriously surfaced in Israel and is being billed as one of the “lost” Dead Sea Scrolls uses some of the same phrases and imagery as the other 2000-year-old writings, a scholar said Monday after studying excerpts.

But it’s too soon to say whether the “Angel Scroll,” which describes a believer’s trip through the heavens, is a major find that will shed new light on Jewish mysticism and the origins of Christianity, or an elaborate hoax, said Stephen Pfann, president of the University of the Holy Land.

The story of the Angel Scroll is shrouded in mystery. Rumours have circulated for years among scholars in the Holy Land that one of the scrolls - the religious writings of the Essenes found in caves near the Dead Sea between 1947 and 1954 - made its way to an antiquities dealer in one of the nearby Arab capitals.