The Dead Sea Scrolls
1947
Some of the most important religious manuscripts ever found were discovered not by archaeologists but by shepherds looking for a lost animal. Over the following decade, caves in the cliffs above the Dead Sea gave up hundreds of ancient manuscripts and many thousands of fragments. For Jews and Christians alike, the scrolls opened a window onto the world of the late Second Temple period, and onto how sacred texts were copied and read two thousand years ago. They also started arguments that are still going on.
A goat, a cave and some jars
The Library of Congress tells the discovery this way: in 1947 young Bedouin shepherds searching for a stray goat in the Judean Desert went into a long-untouched cave and found jars filled with ancient scrolls. That first find produced seven scrolls. Wikipedia names the shepherds as Muhammed edh-Dhib, his cousin Jum'a Muhammed and Khalil Musa, and places the discovery between November 1946 and February 1947, which is why some accounts say 1946 and others 1947.
The first find set off a search. According to the Library of Congress, it lasted nearly a decade and eventually yielded thousands of fragments from eleven caves. Wikipedia gives the same count of eleven caves near the ruins of Khirbet Qumran, and says researchers have pieced together about 981 different manuscripts from the material. The Israel Antiquities Authority's Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library also refers to eleven caves near Qumran and stresses that, while a few scrolls survived nearly whole, most of the collection is thousands of fragments of parchment and papyrus.
How old are they?
Dating the scrolls was one of the first big questions. The Library of Congress says that historical, palaeographic and linguistic evidence, together with carbon-14 dating, placed the scrolls and the Qumran ruin between the third century BC and 68 AD. The Israel Antiquities Authority gives a very similar range, from the third century BCE to the first century CE, before the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE.
Both sources draw out why that matters. The Library of Congress says the scrolls are older than any other surviving manuscripts of the Hebrew Scriptures by almost a thousand years. The Israel Antiquities Authority makes the same point, saying the Qumran scrolls are more than a thousand years older than the biblical manuscripts previously known.
What the scrolls contain
The Israel Antiquities Authority divides the Qumran material into two broad groups. The first is about 230 'biblical' manuscripts, copies of books now in the Hebrew Bible. It says the caves preserved partial or complete copies of every book of the Hebrew Bible except Esther. Wikipedia also describes the absence of Esther among the finds.
Many of these copies are strikingly close to the Masoretic Text, the traditional Hebrew text used in Jewish communities for more than a thousand years. Others, the Israel Antiquities Authority notes, differ in spelling and wording, with additions and omissions that suggest scribes sometimes felt free to adjust the texts they copied. The Library of Congress exhibition describes one example: a Psalms scroll from Cave 11 that contains parts of 41 biblical psalms in an unusual order, along with hymns not otherwise known.
The second group is non-biblical religious writing: hymns, prayers, wisdom texts, calendars, commentaries and visions of the end of days. Some of these were already known in translation, such as the book of Jubilees, which the Israel Antiquities Authority says was known in Ethiopic and Greek before turning up in Hebrew at Qumran. Many others were entirely new to scholars.
Who wrote them?
This is the point of sharpest disagreement. For decades the standard view was that the scrolls belonged to the Essenes, a Jewish group described by ancient writers, who were thought to have lived at Qumran. The Israel Antiquities Authority says that in the early years scholars attributed all of the Qumran scrolls to the Essenes, but that this consensus has since been challenged and modified, even though many scholars still see a link.
Wikipedia sets out the same debate. It says the Qumran-Essene theory was close to universal until the 1990s, citing parallels between a scroll called the Community Rule and the Essene practices described by the historian Josephus, and Pliny the Elder's mention of Essenes living near the Dead Sea. It also describes rival views: that the scrolls came from another sectarian group, or that some were brought from Jerusalem. The Library of Congress exhibition framed the same unresolved questions: why the scrolls were hidden, who placed them in the caves, and who lived at Qumran.
About a quarter of the non-biblical manuscripts, according to the Israel Antiquities Authority, are 'sectarian', meaning they seem to describe the beliefs and rules of one particular community, with a strong emphasis on purity. Whoever that community was, it took its faith with great seriousness.
The treasure map on copper
Not every scroll is parchment or papyrus. The Israel Antiquities Authority mentions that the text of one scroll is engraved on copper. Wikipedia says the Copper Scroll was found in 1952 in Cave 3. Its contents, a list of hidden treasures and where to find them, have fascinated readers ever since, and no treasure from its list is known to have been recovered. That story deserves its own page.
Why they still matter
The scrolls are sacred-text history rather than legend, but they sit right beside some of the most cherished traditions of two faiths. For many readers the close agreement between ancient copies and later Hebrew Bibles is a powerful testimony to faithful transmission. For scholars, the variations show a time when, as the Israel Antiquities Authority puts it, there was not yet a single fixed collection of scripture. Both observations come from the same jars in the same caves.
Today, Wikipedia says, nearly all of the roughly 15,000 scrolls and fragments are kept at the Shrine of the Book in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, and much of the collection can now be viewed online through the Israel Antiquities Authority's digital library.
Further reading
- Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library (Israel Antiquities Authority): Introduction
- Library of Congress: Scrolls from the Dead Sea
- Wikipedia: Dead Sea Scrolls