
The Isaiah Scroll, designated 1QIsa
a and also known as the Great Isaiah Scroll, is one of the seven
Dead Sea Scrolls
The Dead Sea Scrolls, also called the Qumran Caves Scrolls, are a set of List of Hebrew Bible manuscripts, ancient Jewish manuscripts from the Second Temple period (516 BCE – 70 CE). They were discovered over a period of ten years, between ...
that were first discovered by
Bedouin
The Bedouin, Beduin, or Bedu ( ; , singular ) are pastorally nomadic Arab tribes who have historically inhabited the desert regions in the Arabian Peninsula, North Africa, the Levant, and Mesopotamia (Iraq). The Bedouin originated in the Sy ...
shepherds in 1947 from
Qumran
Qumran (; ; ') is an archaeological site in the West Bank managed by Israel's Qumran National Park. It is located on a dry marl plateau about from the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea, about south of the historic city of Jericho, and adjac ...
Cave 1.
The scroll is written in
Hebrew
Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and ...
and contains the entire
Book of Isaiah
The Book of Isaiah ( ) is the first of the Latter Prophets in the Hebrew Bible and the first of the Major Prophets in the Christian Old Testament. It is identified by a superscription as the words of the 8th-century BC prophet Isaiah ben Amo ...
from beginning to end, apart from a few small damaged portions.
[The Digital Dead Sea Scrolls: The Great Isaiah Scroll](_blank)
''dss.collections.imj.org'' It is the oldest complete copy of the Book of Isaiah, being approximately 1000 years older than the previous oldest Hebrew manuscripts known before the scrolls' discovery.
1QIsa
a is also notable in being the only scroll from the Qumran Caves to be preserved almost in its entirety.
The scroll is written on 17 sheets of
parchment
Parchment is a writing material made from specially prepared Tanning (leather), untanned skins of animals—primarily sheep, calves and goats. It has been used as a writing medium in West Asia and Europe for more than two millennia. By AD 400 ...
. It is particularly large, being about 734 cm (24 feet) long and ranges from 25.3 to 27 cm high (10 to 10.6 inches) with 54 columns of text.
__TOC__
History to discovery
The exact authors of 1QIsa
a are unknown, as is the exact date of writing. Pieces of the scroll have been dated using both
radiocarbon dating
Radiocarbon dating (also referred to as carbon dating or carbon-14 dating) is a method for Chronological dating, determining the age of an object containing organic material by using the properties of carbon-14, radiocarbon, a radioactive Isotop ...
and
palaeographic/scribal dating. These methods resulted in calibrated date ranges between 356 and 103 BC and 150–100 BC respectively. This seemingly fits with the theory that the scroll(s) was a product of the
Essenes
The Essenes (; Hebrew: , ''ʾĪssīyīm''; Greek: Ἐσσηνοί, Ἐσσαῖοι, or Ὀσσαῖοι, ''Essenoi, Essaioi, Ossaioi'') or Essenians were a mystic Jewish sect during the Second Temple period that flourished from the 2nd cent ...
, a mystic Jewish sect, first mentioned by
Pliny the Elder
Gaius Plinius Secundus (AD 23/24 79), known in English as Pliny the Elder ( ), was a Roman Empire, Roman author, Natural history, naturalist, and naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and a friend of the Roman emperor, emperor Vesp ...
in his ''
Natural History
Natural history is a domain of inquiry involving organisms, including animals, fungi, and plants, in their natural environment, leaning more towards observational than experimental methods of study. A person who studies natural history is cal ...
,'' and later by
Josephus
Flavius Josephus (; , ; ), born Yosef ben Mattityahu (), was a Roman–Jewish historian and military leader. Best known for writing '' The Jewish War'', he was born in Jerusalem—then part of the Roman province of Judea—to a father of pr ...
and
Philo Judaeus. Further supporting this theory are the number of Essene sectarian texts found in the surrounding
Qumran Caves, and the lining up of recorded beliefs to artifacts or structures at the Qumran site (like communal meals and the obsession with ritual purity lining up with rooms with hundreds of plates and many ritual baths found at the site). This theory is the most accepted in scholarly discourse. Further evidence that 1QIsa
a was used by the sectarian community at Qumran is that scholars Abegg,
Flint
Flint, occasionally flintstone, is a sedimentary cryptocrystalline form of the mineral quartz, categorized as the variety of chert that occurs in chalk or marly limestone. Historically, flint was widely used to make stone tools and start ...
, and Ulrich argue that the same scribe who copied the sectarian scroll
Rule of the Community (1QS) also made a correction to 1QIsa
a.
The reason for the placement of 1QIsa
a in Qumran Cave 1 is still unknown, though it has been speculated that it was placed, along with the other scrolls, by Jews (Essene or not) fleeing the
Roman forces during the
First Jewish–Roman War (–73 AD).
The scroll was discovered in Qumran Cave 1, by a group of three
Ta'amireh shepherds, near the
Ein Feshkha spring off the northwest shore of the
Dead Sea
The Dead Sea (; or ; ), also known by #Names, other names, is a landlocked salt lake bordered by Jordan to the east, the Israeli-occupied West Bank to the west and Israel to the southwest. It lies in the endorheic basin of the Jordan Rift Valle ...
between late 1946 and early 1947; initially discovered when one of the shepherds heard the sound of shattering pottery after throwing a rock while searching for a lost member of his flock.
Once the shepherds agreed to return in a few days, the youngest one, Muhammed edh-Dhib returned alone before them, finding a cave filled with broken and whole jars and fragments of scrolls.
[Flint, Peter W. "The Dead Sea Scrolls". Abingdon Press, Nashville, 2013, p. 2] Of the intact jars, edh-Dhib found all but two empty; one was filled with reddish earth, and the other with a parchment scroll (later found to be the Great Isaiah Scroll) and two oblong items covered in a black wax or pitch (later found to be the
Habakkuk Commentary (1QpHab) and the
Community Rule (1QS)).
Edh-Dhib returned with the three scrolls to the displeasure of the other shepherds for his solo journey, and the scrolls were transferred to a Ta'amireh site southeast of
Bethlehem
Bethlehem is a city in the West Bank, Palestine, located about south of Jerusalem, and the capital of the Bethlehem Governorate. It had a population of people, as of . The city's economy is strongly linked to Tourism in the State of Palesti ...
where they were kept in a bag suspended on a tent pole for several weeks. During this time, the front cover of 1QIsa
a broke off.
The three scrolls were brought to an antiques dealer in
Bethlehem
Bethlehem is a city in the West Bank, Palestine, located about south of Jerusalem, and the capital of the Bethlehem Governorate. It had a population of people, as of . The city's economy is strongly linked to Tourism in the State of Palesti ...
for appraisal.
Publication
The scroll first came into the possession of Khalil Iskander Shahin, better known as Kando, an antiques dealer who was a member of the Syrian Church.
Kando was unable to make anything of the writing on the scroll, and sold it to
Athanasius Yeshue Samuel (better known as
Mar Samuel), the Syrian Archbishop of the Syrian Orthodox Church in East
Jerusalem
Jerusalem is a city in the Southern Levant, on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. It is one of the List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, oldest cities in the world, and ...
, who was anxious to have it authenticated.
The Archbishop consulted many scholars in Jerusalem to determine the nature and significance of the documents, and in July 1947, he finally consulted the
École Biblique and came in contact with the visiting Dutch scholar Professor J. van der Ploeg of
Nijmegen University. Van der Ploeg identified one of the manuscripts at the monastery as a copy of the
Book of Isaiah
The Book of Isaiah ( ) is the first of the Latter Prophets in the Hebrew Bible and the first of the Major Prophets in the Christian Old Testament. It is identified by a superscription as the words of the 8th-century BC prophet Isaiah ben Amo ...
in Hebrew, but was met with skepticism, as a fellow scholar at the
École Biblique believed that the scrolls must be fakes due to their antiquity.
In January 1948, Professor
Eleazar Sukenik of the Chair of Palestinian Archaeology in the
Hebrew University arranged to meet with a member of the Syrian community in the
Y.M.C.A building of
Jerusalem
Jerusalem is a city in the Southern Levant, on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. It is one of the List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, oldest cities in the world, and ...
to see the scrolls and borrow them for a few days, after hearing of their existence at the monastery.
Upon realizing their authenticity, Sukenik copied several chapters of the Book of Isaiah from the manuscript and distributed copies to the Constituent Assembly of the State of Israel.
On 18 February 1948, Father Butrus Sowmy of
St. Mark's Monastery called the
American Schools of Oriental Research
The American Society of Overseas Research (ASOR), founded in 1900 as the American School of Oriental Study and Research in Palestine, is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization based in Alexandria, Virginia, which supports the research and teaching of ...
(ASOR) to contact
William Brownlee, a Fellow at the ASOR, about publishing the Great Isaiah Scroll, the
Habakkuk Commentary, and the
Community Rule. Brownlee was away from the school temporarily, so Sowmy was put in contact with Dr.
John Trever, photographer and temporary director of the school.
Trever photographed the scrolls and sent the photographs to palaeographer and dean of American archaeologists, Professor
William Albright of
Johns Hopkins University
The Johns Hopkins University (often abbreviated as Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private university, private research university in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. Founded in 1876 based on the European research institution model, J ...
, who dated the manuscript of Isaiah at around 100 BCE.
Early in 1949,
Mar Samuel, Syrian Archbishop–Metropolitan of Jerusalem, brought the scroll to the United States, hoping to sell it and the three others he had in his possession.
Samuel permitted ASOR to publish them within a limit of three years, and so Dr.
Millar Burrows, director of ASOR, along with Dr.
John Trever and Dr.
William Brownlee prepared the scrolls for publication.
The scrolls initially purchased by Samuel were published by the
American Schools of Oriental Research
The American Society of Overseas Research (ASOR), founded in 1900 as the American School of Oriental Study and Research in Palestine, is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization based in Alexandria, Virginia, which supports the research and teaching of ...
in 1950, and included 1QIsa
a, 1QpHab, and 1QS.
The scrolls were advertised for sale in the ''
Wall Street Journal
''The Wall Street Journal'' (''WSJ''), also referred to simply as the ''Journal,'' is an American newspaper based in New York City. The newspaper provides extensive coverage of news, especially business and finance. It operates on a subscriptio ...
'' in June, 1954 under the "miscellaneous" columns, but were eventually bought by Israeli archeologist
Yigael Yadin for $250,000 in 1954 and brought back to Israel, although the purchase was not announced until February 1955.
The scroll, along with over 200 fragments from the
Dead Sea Scrolls
The Dead Sea Scrolls, also called the Qumran Caves Scrolls, are a set of List of Hebrew Bible manuscripts, ancient Jewish manuscripts from the Second Temple period (516 BCE – 70 CE). They were discovered over a period of ten years, between ...
, is now housed in Jerusalem at the
Shrine of the Book at the
Israel Museum
The Israel Museum (, ''Muze'on Yisrael'', ) is an Art museum, art and archaeology museum in Jerusalem. It was established in 1965 as Israel's largest and foremost cultural institution, and one of the world's leading Encyclopedic museum, encyclopa ...
. Recently, the
Israel Museum
The Israel Museum (, ''Muze'on Yisrael'', ) is an Art museum, art and archaeology museum in Jerusalem. It was established in 1965 as Israel's largest and foremost cultural institution, and one of the world's leading Encyclopedic museum, encyclopa ...
, in a partnership with Google, created th
Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Project and has digitized 1QIsa
a, the Great Isaiah Scroll, providing a high-quality image of the entire scroll. The digitized scroll provides an English translation alongside the original text, and can be viewed on the museum'
websiteor at th
Google Art Project
Scribal profile and textual variants

The text of the Great Isaiah Scroll is generally consistent with the
Masoretic version and preserves all sixty-six chapters of the Hebrew version in the same sequence.
There are small areas of damage where the leather has cracked off and a few words are missing.
The text displays a scribal hand typical of the period of 125–100 BCE.
The scroll also displays a tendency towards longer spellings of words which is consistent with this period.
There is evidence of corrections and insertions by later scribes between the date of original writing and 68 CE.
A unique feature of the scroll is that it is divided into two halves, each with 27 columns and 33 chapters, unlike later versions, suggesting that this may be the earliest dividing point for the book of
Isaiah.
There is some debate among scholars over whether the entire original scroll was copied by a single scribe, or by two scribes mirroring each other's writing styles. A 2021 analysis by researchers at the
University of Groningen
The University of Groningen (abbreviated as UG; , abbreviated as RUG) is a Public university#Continental Europe, public research university of more than 30,000 students in the city of Groningen (city), Groningen, Netherlands. Founded in 1614, th ...
applied artificial intelligence and pattern recognition tools to determine that it was highly likely that two scribes copied the scroll, each contributing one of the two halves.
The scroll contains scribal errors, corrections, and more than 2600 textual variants when compared with the
Masoretic codex.
This level of variation in 1QIsa
a is much greater than other
Isaiah scrolls found at
Qumran
Qumran (; ; ') is an archaeological site in the West Bank managed by Israel's Qumran National Park. It is located on a dry marl plateau about from the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea, about south of the historic city of Jericho, and adjac ...
, with most, such as
1QIsab, being closer to the
Masoretic Text
The Masoretic Text (MT or 𝕸; ) is the authoritative Hebrew and Aramaic text of the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible (''Tanakh'') in Rabbinic Judaism. The Masoretic Text defines the Jewish canon and its precise letter-text, with its vocaliz ...
.
Some variants are significant and include differences in one or more verses or in several words. Most variants are more minor and include differences of a single word, alternative spellings, plural versus single usage, and changes in the order of words.
Some of the major variants are notable as they show the development of the book of Isaiah over time or represent scribal errors unique to 1QIsa
a. Abegg,
Flint
Flint, occasionally flintstone, is a sedimentary cryptocrystalline form of the mineral quartz, categorized as the variety of chert that occurs in chalk or marly limestone. Historically, flint was widely used to make stone tools and start ...
and Ulrich argue that the absence of the second half of verse 9 and all of verse 10 in chapter 2 of 1QIsa
a indicates that these are slightly later additions.
These verses are found in other
Qumran
Qumran (; ; ') is an archaeological site in the West Bank managed by Israel's Qumran National Park. It is located on a dry marl plateau about from the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea, about south of the historic city of Jericho, and adjac ...
Isaiah scrolls, the
Masoretic Text
The Masoretic Text (MT or 𝕸; ) is the authoritative Hebrew and Aramaic text of the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible (''Tanakh'') in Rabbinic Judaism. The Masoretic Text defines the Jewish canon and its precise letter-text, with its vocaliz ...
, and the
Septuagint
The Septuagint ( ), sometimes referred to as the Greek Old Testament or The Translation of the Seventy (), and abbreviated as LXX, is the earliest extant Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible from the original Biblical Hebrew. The full Greek ...
.
In chapter 40, a shorter version of verse 7 is found, matching the Septuagint. In the same verse there is also an insertion by a later scribe showing a longer version that is consistent with the
Masoretic Text
The Masoretic Text (MT or 𝕸; ) is the authoritative Hebrew and Aramaic text of the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible (''Tanakh'') in Rabbinic Judaism. The Masoretic Text defines the Jewish canon and its precise letter-text, with its vocaliz ...
.
There are also several examples of likely scribal error in the scroll, such as Isaiah 16:8–9. Most of 16:8 is missing and the first part of verse 9 is missing when compared to the
Masoretic Text
The Masoretic Text (MT or 𝕸; ) is the authoritative Hebrew and Aramaic text of the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible (''Tanakh'') in Rabbinic Judaism. The Masoretic Text defines the Jewish canon and its precise letter-text, with its vocaliz ...
and
Septuagint
The Septuagint ( ), sometimes referred to as the Greek Old Testament or The Translation of the Seventy (), and abbreviated as LXX, is the earliest extant Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible from the original Biblical Hebrew. The full Greek ...
, suggesting that the scribe's eye may have skipped over part of the text.
Abegg,
Flint
Flint, occasionally flintstone, is a sedimentary cryptocrystalline form of the mineral quartz, categorized as the variety of chert that occurs in chalk or marly limestone. Historically, flint was widely used to make stone tools and start ...
, and Ulrich note that there are a number of errors of this nature that may represent a degree of carelessness on the part of the scribe.
In some cases, the variants from 1QIsa
a have been incorporated in modern bible translations. An example is where 1QIsa
a and
Septuagint
The Septuagint ( ), sometimes referred to as the Greek Old Testament or The Translation of the Seventy (), and abbreviated as LXX, is the earliest extant Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible from the original Biblical Hebrew. The full Greek ...
versions match and clarify the meaning, while the
Masoretic Text
The Masoretic Text (MT or 𝕸; ) is the authoritative Hebrew and Aramaic text of the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible (''Tanakh'') in Rabbinic Judaism. The Masoretic Text defines the Jewish canon and its precise letter-text, with its vocaliz ...
is somewhat obscure.
Peter Flint notes that the readings from the
Qumran
Qumran (; ; ') is an archaeological site in the West Bank managed by Israel's Qumran National Park. It is located on a dry marl plateau about from the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea, about south of the historic city of Jericho, and adjac ...
scrolls such as Isaiah 53:11 have been adopted by the
New International Version translation and
Revised Standard Version translation.
Footnotes
References
*
External links
View the entire scrollComparison in two columns of the Isaiah Scroll with the Masoretic text
{{Book of Isaiah
Dead Sea Scrolls
2nd-century BC biblical manuscripts
Book of Isaiah
Collection of the Israel Museum