The Dead Sea scrolls consist of about 900 documents, including texts from the Hebrew Bible, discovered between 1947 and 1956 in eleven caves in and around the Qumran Wadi near the ruins of the ancient settlement of Khirbet Qumran, on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea.
The texts are of great religious and historical significance, as they include some of the only known surviving copies of Biblical documents made before 100 B.C. and preserve evide...
more
The Dead Sea scrolls consist of about 900 documents, including texts from the Hebrew Bible, discovered between 1947 and 1956 in eleven caves in and around the Qumran Wadi near the ruins of the ancient settlement of Khirbet Qumran, on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea.
The texts are of great religious and historical significance, as they include some of the only known surviving copies of Biblical documents made before 100 B.C. and preserve evidence of late Second Temple Judaism. They are written in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek, mostly on parchment, but with some written on papyrus. These manuscripts generally date between 150 BCE to 70 CE. The scrolls are most commonly identified with the ancient Jewish sect called the Essenes, though some recent interpretations have challenged their association with the scrolls. Still, these represent a minority view, as references in ancient texts from Josephus, Philo, and Pliny all discuss the Essenes, with Pliny identifying the center of Essene...
less
