The Dead Sea Scrolls, also called the Qumran Caves Scrolls, are a set of ancient Jewish manuscripts from the

Second Temple period The Second Temple period or post-exilic period in Jewish history denotes the approximately 600 years (516 BCE – 70 CE) during which the Second Temple stood in the city of Jerusalem. It began with the return to Zion and subsequent reconstructio ...

(516 BCE – 70 CE). They were discovered over a period of ten years, between 1946 and 1956, at the

Qumran Caves The Qumran Caves ( '; ''HaMeara Kumran'') are a series of caves, both natural and artificial, found around the archaeological site of Qumran in the Judaean Desert. It is in these caves that the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered. Israel Nature a ...

near

Ein Feshkha Ein Feshkha (, also Ain Al-Fashka) or Einot Tzukim () is a nature reserve and archaeological site on the north-western shore of the Dead Sea, about south of Qumran in the West Bank. It is located just north of the headland , the "headland of F ...

in the

West Bank The West Bank is located on the western bank of the Jordan River and is the larger of the two Palestinian territories (the other being the Gaza Strip) that make up the State of Palestine. A landlocked territory near the coast of the Mediter ...

, on the northern 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 ...

. Dating from the 3rd century BCE to the 1st century CE, the Dead Sea Scrolls include the oldest surviving manuscripts of entire books later included in the

biblical canon A biblical canon is a set of texts (also called "books") which a particular Jewish or Christian religious community regards as part of the Bible. The English word ''canon'' comes from the Ancient Greek, Greek , meaning 'ruler, rule' or 'measu ...

s, including deuterocanonical manuscripts from late

Second Temple Judaism Second Temple Judaism is the Judaism, Jewish religion as it developed during the Second Temple period, which began with the construction of the Second Temple around 516 BCE and ended with the Siege of Jerusalem (70 CE), destruction of Jerusalem in ...

and extrabiblical books. At the same time, they cast new light on the emergence of

Christianity Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion, which states that Jesus in Christianity, Jesus is the Son of God (Christianity), Son of God and Resurrection of Jesus, rose from the dead after his Crucifixion of Jesus, crucifixion, whose ...

and of

Rabbinic Judaism Rabbinic Judaism (), also called Rabbinism, Rabbinicism, Rabbanite Judaism, or Talmudic Judaism, is rooted in the many forms of Judaism that coexisted and together formed Second Temple Judaism in the land of Israel, giving birth to classical rabb ...

. Almost all of the 15,000 scrolls and scroll fragments are held in the

Shrine of the Book The Shrine of the Book (, ''Heikhal HaSefer'') is a wing of the Israel Museum in the Givat Ram neighborhood of Jerusalem that houses the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Aleppo Codex, among others. History The building was constructed in 1965, funded by ...

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 ...

located in

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 ...

. The Israeli government's custody of the Dead Sea Scrolls is disputed by

Jordan Jordan, officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, is a country in the Southern Levant region of West Asia. Jordan is bordered by Syria to the north, Iraq to the east, Saudi Arabia to the south, and Israel and the occupied Palestinian ter ...

and the

Palestinian Authority The Palestinian Authority (PA), officially known as the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), is the Fatah-controlled government body that exercises partial civil control over the Palestinian enclaves in the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, ...

on territorial, legal, and humanitarian grounds—they were mostly discovered following the

Jordanian annexation of the West Bank The Jordanian administration of the West Bank officially began on 24 April 1950, and ended with the decision to sever ties on 31 July 1988. The period started during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, when Jordan occupied and subsequently annexed the ...

and were acquired by

Israel Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia. It Borders of Israel, shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the east, Egypt to the south-west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Isr ...

after Jordan lost the

1967 Arab–Israeli War The Six-Day War, also known as the June War, 1967 Arab–Israeli War or Third Arab–Israeli War, was fought between Israel and a coalition of Arab world, Arab states, primarily United Arab Republic, Egypt, Syria, and Jordan from 5 to 10June ...

—whilst Israel's claims are primarily based on historical and religious grounds, given their significance in

Jewish history Jewish history is the history of the Jews, their Jewish peoplehood, nation, Judaism, religion, and Jewish culture, culture, as it developed and interacted with other peoples, religions and cultures. Jews originated from the Israelites and H ...

and in the heritage of

Judaism Judaism () is an Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic, Monotheism, monotheistic, ethnic religion that comprises the collective spiritual, cultural, and legal traditions of the Jews, Jewish people. Religious Jews regard Judaism as their means of o ...

. Many thousands of written fragments have been discovered in the Dead Sea area – most have been published, together with the details of their discovery, in the 40-volume ''

Discoveries in the Judaean Desert ''Discoveries in the Judaean Desert'' (DJD) is the official 40-volume publication that serves as the ''editio princeps'' for the Dead Sea Scrolls.Lim, Timothy H. (2005) ''The Dead Sea Scrolls. A Very Short Introduction''. Oxford: Oxford University ...

''. They represent the remnants of larger manuscripts damaged by natural causes or through human interference, with the vast majority holding only small scraps of text. However, a small number of well-preserved and nearly intact manuscripts have survived—fewer than a dozen among those from the Qumran Caves. Researchers have assembled a collection of 981 different manuscripts (discovered in 1946/1947 and in 1956) from 11 caves, which lie in the immediate vicinity of the

Hellenistic Jewish Hellenistic Judaism was a form of Judaism in classical antiquity that combined Jewish religious tradition with elements of Hellenistic culture and religion. Until the early Muslim conquests of the eastern Mediterranean, the main centers of Hellen ...

settlement at the site of

Khirbet 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 ...

in the eastern

Judaean Desert The Judaean Desert or Judean Desert (, ) is a desert in the West Bank and Israel that stretches east of the ridge of the Judaean Mountains and in their rain shadow, so east of Jerusalem, and descends to the Dead Sea. Under the name El-Bariyah, ...

in the West Bank. The caves are located about west of the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea, whence the scrolls derive their name. Archaeologists have long associated the scrolls with the ancient Jewish sect known as 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 ...

, although some recent interpretations have challenged this connection and argue that priests in Jerusalem or other unknown Jewish groups wrote the scrolls. Most of the manuscripts are 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 ...

, with some written in

Aramaic Aramaic (; ) is a Northwest Semitic language that originated in the ancient region of Syria and quickly spread to Mesopotamia, the southern Levant, Sinai, southeastern Anatolia, and Eastern Arabia, where it has been continually written a ...

(for example the Son of God Text, in different regional dialects, including

Nabataean The Nabataeans or Nabateans (; Nabataean Aramaic: , , vocalized as ) were an ancient Arab people who inhabited northern Arabia and the southern Levant. Their settlements—most prominently the assumed capital city of Raqmu (present-day Petr ...

) and a few in

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

. Other discoveries from the Judaean Desert add

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

(from

Masada Masada ( ', 'fortress'; ) is a mountain-top fortress complex in the Judaean Desert, overlooking the western shore of the Dead Sea in southeastern Israel. The fort, built in the first century BCE, was constructed atop a natural plateau rising ov ...

), and some later

Arabic Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...

manuscripts from the 7th-8th centuries CE (from Khirbet al-Mird). Most of the texts are written on

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 ...

, some on

papyrus Papyrus ( ) is a material similar to thick paper that was used in ancient times as a writing surface. It was made from the pith of the papyrus plant, ''Cyperus papyrus'', a wetland sedge. ''Papyrus'' (plural: ''papyri'' or ''papyruses'') can a ...

, and one on copper. Though scholarly consensus dates the Dead Sea Scrolls to between the 3rd century BCE and the 1st century CE, there are Arabic manuscripts from associated Judaean Desert sites that are dated between the 8th and 10th century CE. Bronze coins found at the same sites form a series beginning with

John Hyrcanus John Hyrcanus (; ; ) was a Hasmonean (Maccabee, Maccabean) leader and Jewish High Priest of Israel of the 2nd century BCE (born 164 BCE, reigned from 134 BCE until he died in 104 BCE). In rabbinic literature he is often referred to as ''Yoḥana ...

, a ruler of the

Hasmonean Kingdom The Hasmonean dynasty (; ''Ḥašmōnāʾīm''; ) was a ruling dynasty of Judea and surrounding regions during the Hellenistic times of the Second Temple period (part of classical antiquity), from BC to 37 BC. Between and BC the dynasty rule ...

(in office 135–104 BCE), and continuing until the period of the

First Jewish–Roman War The First Jewish–Roman War (66–74 CE), also known as the Great Jewish Revolt, the First Jewish Revolt, the War of Destruction, or the Jewish War, was the first of three major Jewish rebellions against the Roman Empire. Fought in the prov ...

(66–73 CE), supporting the

paleography Palaeography (American and British English spelling differences#ae and oe, UK) or paleography (American and British English spelling differences#ae and oe, US) (ultimately from , , 'old', and , , 'to write') is the study and academic disciplin ...

and

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 ...

of the scrolls. Owing to the poor condition of some of the scrolls, scholars have not identified all of their texts. The identified texts fall into three general groups: # About 40% are copies of texts from

Hebrew scriptures The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach"
. ''

Book of Enoch The Book of Enoch (also 1 Enoch; Hebrew language, Hebrew: סֵפֶר חֲנוֹךְ, ''Sēfer Ḥănōḵ''; , ) is an Second Temple Judaism, ancient Jewish Apocalyptic literature, apocalyptic religious text, ascribed by tradition to the Patriar ...

, the

Book of Jubilees The Book of Jubilees is an ancient Jewish apocryphal text of 50 chapters (1,341 verses), considered canonical by the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, as well as by Haymanot Judaism, a denomination observed by members of Ethiopian Jewish ...

, the

Book of Tobit The Book of Tobit (), also known as the Book of Tobias, is a deuterocanonical pre-Christian work from the 3rd or early 2nd century BC which describes how God tests the faithful, responds to prayers, and protects the pre-covenant community (i.e., ...

, the

Wisdom of Sirach The Book of Sirach (), also known as The Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach, The Wisdom of Jesus son of Eleazar, or Ecclesiasticus (), is a Jewish literary work originally written in Biblical Hebrew. The longest extant wisdom book from antiqui ...

Psalms 152–155 Psalms 152 to 155 are additional Psalms found in two Syriac biblical manuscripts and several manuscripts of 's "Book of Discipline", first identified by the orientalist librarian Giuseppe Simone Assemani in 1759. Together with Psalm 151 they are ...

, etc. # The remainder (roughly 30%) are sectarian manuscripts of previously unknown documents that shed light on the rules and beliefs of a particular sect or groups within greater Judaism, such as the

Community Rule The ''Community Rule'' (), which is designated 1QS and was previously referred to as the ''Manual of Discipline'', is one of the first scrolls to be discovered near the ruins of Qumran, the scrolls found in the eleven caves between 1947 and 1954 ...

, the

War Scroll ''The War of the Sons of Light Against the Sons of Darkness'', also known as War Rule, Rule of War and the War Scroll, is a manual for military organization and strategy that was discovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls. The manuscript was among th ...

, the Pesher on Habakkuk, and

The Rule of the Blessing ''The'' is a grammatical article in English, denoting nouns that are already or about to be mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The ...

Discovery

The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in a series of 12 caves around the site originally known as

near the

in the

(then controlled by Jordan) between 1946 and 1956 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 and a team of archaeologists. The practice of storing worn-out sacred manuscripts in earthenware vessels buried in the earth or within caves is related to the ancient Jewish custom of

genizah A genizah (; , also ''geniza''; plural: ''genizot'' 'h''or ''genizahs'') is a storage area in a Judaism, Jewish synagogue or cemetery designated for the temporary storage of worn-out Hebrew-language books and papers on religious topics prior t ...

Initial discovery (1946–1947)

The initial discovery by Bedouin shepherd Muhammed edh-Dhib, his cousin Jum'a Muhammed, and Khalil Musa took place between November 1946 and February 1947. The shepherds discovered seven scrolls housed in jars in a cave near what is now known as 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 ...

site. John C. Trever reconstructed the story of the scrolls from several interviews with the Bedouins. Edh-Dhib's cousin noticed the caves, but edh-Dhib was the first to actually fall into one (the cave now called Cave 1). He retrieved a handful of scrolls, which Trever identifies as the

Isaiah Scroll The Isaiah Scroll, designated 1QIsaa and also known as the Great Isaiah Scroll, is one of the seven Dead Sea Scrolls that were first discovered by Bedouin shepherds in 1947 from Qumran List of manuscripts from Qumran Cave 1, Cave 1. The scroll i ...

Habakkuk Commentary The Habakkuk Commentary or Pesher Habakkuk, labelled 1QpHab ( Cave 1, Qumran, pesher, Habakkuk), was among the original seven Dead Sea Scrolls discovered in 1947 and published in 1951. Due to its early discovery and rapid publication, as well a ...

, and the

, and took them back to the camp to show to his family. None of the scrolls were destroyed in this process. The Bedouins kept the scrolls hanging on a tent pole while they contemplated what they should do with them, periodically showing the scrolls to their people. At some point during this time, the Community Rule was split in two. The Bedouins first took the scrolls to a dealer named Ibrahim 'Ijha 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 ...

. 'Ijha returned them, saying they were worthless, after being warned that they might have been stolen from a synagogue. Undaunted, the Bedouins went to a nearby market, where a Syrian Christian offered to buy them. A sheikh joined their conversation and suggested that they take the scrolls to Khalil Eskander Shahin, "Kando", a cobbler and part-time antiques dealer. The Bedouins and the dealers returned to the site, leaving one scroll with Kando and selling three others to a dealer for seven Jordanian pounds (approximately $28, or $ in dollars). The original scrolls continued to change hands after the Bedouins left them in the possession of a third party until a sale could be arranged. In 1947 the original seven scrolls caught the attention of Trever of 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), who compared the script in the scrolls to the

Nash Papyrus The Nash Papyrus is a collection of four papyrus fragments acquired in Egypt in 1902, inscribed with a Hebrew text which mainly contains the Ten Commandments and the first part of the Shema Yisrael prayer, in a form that differs substantially fro ...

, the oldest biblical manuscript then known, and found similarities between them. In March the

1948 Arab–Israeli War The 1948 Arab–Israeli War, also known as the First Arab–Israeli War, followed the 1947–1948 civil war in Mandatory Palestine, civil war in Mandatory Palestine as the second and final stage of the 1948 Palestine war. The civil war becam ...

prompted the move of some of the scrolls to

Beirut Beirut ( ; ) is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Lebanon. , Greater Beirut has a population of 2.5 million, just under half of Lebanon's population, which makes it the List of largest cities in the Levant region by populatio ...

, Lebanon, for safekeeping. On 11 April 1948,

Millar Burrows Millar Burrows ( Wyoming, Ohio, October 26, 1889 – April 29, 1980) was an American biblical scholar, a leading authority on the Dead Sea scrolls and professor emeritus at Yale Divinity School. Burrows was director of American School of Oriental R ...

, head of the ASOR, announced the discovery of the scrolls in a general press release.

Search for the Qumran caves (1948–1949)

Early in September 1948, Metropolitan bishop

Mar Samuel Metropolitan Mor Athanasius Yeshue Samuel (; 19091995), more often referred to as Mor Samuel, was a The First Metropolitan and Archbishop of the Syriac Orthodox Church of Antioch in the United States and Canada, the Metropolitan of Jerusalem o ...

brought some additional scroll fragments that he had acquired to professor Ovid R. Sellers, the succeeding director of ASOR. By the end of 1948, nearly two years after the discovery of the scrolls, scholars had yet to locate the original cave where the fragments had been found. With unrest in the country at that time, no large-scale search could be safely undertaken. Sellers tried to persuade the

Syrians Syrians () are the majority inhabitants of Syria, indigenous to the Levant, most of whom have Arabic, especially its Levantine Arabic, Levantine and Mesopotamian Arabic, Mesopotamian dialects, as a mother tongue. The culture of Syria, cultural ...

to assist in the search for the cave, but he was unable to pay their price. In early 1949, the government of Jordan granted permission to the

Arab Legion The Arab Legion () was the police force, then regular army, of the Emirate of Transjordan, a British protectorate, in the early part of the 20th century, and then of the Jordan, Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, an independent state, with a final Ar ...

to search the area in which the original Qumran cave was believed to exist. Consequently, Cave 1 was rediscovered on 28 January 1949 by Belgian

United Nations The United Nations (UN) is the Earth, global intergovernmental organization established by the signing of the Charter of the United Nations, UN Charter on 26 June 1945 with the stated purpose of maintaining international peace and internationa ...

observer An observer is one who engages in observation or in watching an experiment. Observer may also refer to: Fiction * ''Observer'' (novel), a 2023 science fiction novel by Robert Lanza and Nancy Kress * ''Observer'' (video game), a cyberpunk horr ...

captain Phillipe Lippens and Arab Legion captain Akkash el-Zebn.

Qumran caves rediscovery and new scroll discoveries (1949–1951)

The rediscovery of what became known as Cave 1 at Qumran prompted the initial excavation of the site from 15 February to 5 March 1949 by the Jordanian

Department of Antiquities A Department of Antiquities is a government department with responsibility for cultural heritage management, archaeological research and regulating antiquities trading in some countries. Many were established by British and French colonial admini ...

, led by

Gerald Lankester Harding Gerald Lankester Harding CBE (8 December 1901 – 11 February 1979) was a British archaeologist who was the director of the Department of Antiquities of Jordan from 1936 to 1956. His tenure spanned the period in which the Dead Sea Scrolls were ...

and

Roland de Vaux Roland Guérin de Vaux (17 December 1903 – 10 September 1971) was a French Dominican priest who led the Catholic team that initially worked on the Dead Sea Scrolls. He was the director of the École Biblique, a French Catholic Theological S ...

. The Cave 1 site yielded discoveries of additional Dead Sea Scroll fragments, linen cloth, jars, and other artefacts.

Excavations of Qumran and new cave discoveries (1951–1956, 2017, 2021)

In November 1951, de Vaux and his team from the ASOR began a full excavation of Qumran. By February 1952, the Bedouins had discovered 30 fragments in what was to be designated Cave 2. The discovery of a second cave eventually yielded 300 fragments from 33 manuscripts, including fragments of

Jubilees The Book of Jubilees is an ancient Jewish apocryphal text of 50 chapters (1,341 verses), considered Biblical canon, canonical by the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, as well as by Haymanot, Haymanot Judaism, a denomination observed by membe ...

and the

written in Hebrew. The following month, on 14 March 1952, the ASOR team discovered a third cave with fragments of Jubilees and the

Copper Scroll The Copper Scroll ( 3Q15) is one of the Dead Sea Scrolls found in Cave 3 near Khirbet Qumran, but differs significantly from the others. Whereas the other scrolls are written on parchment or papyrus, this scroll is written on metal: copper mixed ...

. Between September and December 1952, the fragments and scrolls of Caves 4, 5, and 6 were discovered by the ASOR teams. With the monetary value of the scrolls rising as their historical significance was made more public, the Bedouins and the ASOR archaeologists accelerated their search for the scrolls separately in the same general area of Qumran, which was more than one kilometre in length. Between 1953 and 1956, de Vaux led four more archaeological expeditions in the area to uncover scrolls and artefacts. Cave 11 was discovered in 1956 and yielded the last fragments to be found in the vicinity of Qumran. Caves 4–10 are clustered in an area lying in relative proximity from Khirbet Qumran, while caves 1, 2, 3 and 11 are located 1 mile (1–2 kilometres) north, with Cave 3 the most remote. In February 2017, Hebrew University archaeologists announced the discovery of a new 12th cave. There was one blank parchment found in a jar, but broken and empty scroll jars and pickaxes suggest that the cave was looted in the 1950s. In March 2021, Israeli archaeologists announced the discovery of dozens of fragments bearing biblical text, written in Greek, from the books of Zechariah and

Nahum Nahum ( or ; ''Naḥūm'') was a minor prophet whose prophecy is recorded in the ''Tanakh'', also called the Hebrew Bible and the Old Testament. His book comes in chronological order between Micah and Habakkuk in the Bible. He wrote about the ...

. This group of findings is believed to have been hidden in a cave between 132 and 136 CE during the

Bar Kokhba revolt The Bar Kokhba revolt (132–136 AD) was a major uprising by the Jews of Judaea (Roman province), Judaea against the Roman Empire, marking the final and most devastating of the Jewish–Roman wars. Led by Simon bar Kokhba, the rebels succeeded ...

. However, a 10,500-year-old basket made of woven

reeds Reed or Reeds may refer to: Science, technology, biology, and medicine * Reed bird (disambiguation) * Reed pen, writing implement in use since ancient times * Reed (plant), one of several tall, grass-like wetland plants of the order Poales * Re ...

was also discovered in the Muraba'at caves in the Nahal Darga Reserve. Other discoveries included the remains of a child wrapped in cloth dated to around 6,000 years ago, and a cache of coins from the days of the Bar Kochba revolt. In 2021, more scrolls were discovered by Israeli authorities in a different cave near the Dead Sea called the

Cave of Horrors Cave of Horror () is the nickname given to a refuge cave that archaeologists have catalogued as Nahal Hever Cave 8 (8Hev) of the Judaean Desert, Israel, where the remains of Jewish refugees from the Bar Kokhba revolt (c. 132–136 AD) were foun ...

Caves and their contents

The 972 manuscripts found at Qumran were found primarily in two separate formats: as

scroll A scroll (from the Old French ''escroe'' or ''escroue''), also known as a roll, is a roll of papyrus, parchment, or paper containing writing. Structure A scroll is usually partitioned into pages, which are sometimes separate sheets of papyru ...

s and as fragments of previous scrolls and texts. In the fourth cave the fragments were torn into up to 15,000 pieces. These small fragments created somewhat of a problem for scholars. G.L. Harding, director of the Jordanian Department of Antiquities, began working on piecing the fragments together but did not finish this before his death in 1979. ; Cave 1 Wadi Qumran Cave 1 was discovered for the first time in 1946. The original seven Dead Sea Scrolls from Cave 1 are the

Great Isaiah Scroll The Isaiah Scroll, designated 1QIsaa and also known as the Great Isaiah Scroll, is one of the seven Dead Sea Scrolls that were first discovered by Bedouin shepherds in 1947 from Qumran List of manuscripts from Qumran Cave 1, Cave 1. The scroll i ...

(1QIsa), a second copy of Isaiah ( 1QIsa), the

Scroll (1QS), the Pesher on Habakkuk (1QpHab), the

(1QM), the

Thanksgiving Hymns The Thanksgiving Scroll was one of the first seven Dead Sea Scrolls discovered in 1947 by the Bedouin. The scroll gets its name from the recurring use of the phrase "I thank you" in many of the poems. The Hebrew word ''Hodayot'' refers to "thanks" ...

(1QH), and the

Genesis Apocryphon The Genesis Apocryphon (1Q20), also called the Tales of the Patriarchs or the Apocalypse of Lamech and labeled 1QapGen, is one of the original seven Dead Sea Scrolls discovered in 1946 by Bedouin shepherds in Cave 1 near Qumran, a small settlemen ...

(1QapGen). One of the pottery jars containing the scrolls from Cave 1 is now kept in the

British Museum The British Museum is a Museum, public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is the largest in the world. It documents the story of human cu ...

. ; Cave 2 Wadi Qumran Cave 2 was discovered in February 1952 in which the Bedouins discovered 30 fragments. The cave eventually yielded 300 fragments from 33 manuscripts of Dead Sea Scrolls, including fragments of Jubilees and the Wisdom of Sirach written in Hebrew. ; Cave 3 Wadi Qumran Cave 3 was discovered on 14 March 1952 by the ASOR team. The cave initially yielded fragments of Jubilees and the Copper Scroll. ; Caves 4a and 4b The Damascus Document Scroll

Wadi Qumran Cave 4 was discovered in August 1952 and was excavated from 22–29 September 1952 by Harding, de Vaux, and

Józef Milik Józef Tadeusz Milik (Seroczyn, Poland, 24 March 1922 – Paris, 6 January 2006) was a Polish biblical scholar and a Catholic priest, researcher of the Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS) through the deserts of Judea/Jordan, and translator and editor of the ...

. Cave 4 is actually two hand-cut caves (4a and 4b), but since the fragments were mixed they are labelled as 4Q. Cave 4 is the most famous of Qumran caves both because of its visibility from the Qumran plateau and its productivity. It is visible from the plateau to the south of the Qumran settlement. It is by far the most productive of all Qumran caves, producing 90% of the Dead Sea Scrolls and scroll fragments (approx. 15,000 fragments from 500 different texts), including 9–10 copies of Jubilees, along with 21 ''

tefillin Tefillin (Modern Hebrew language, Israeli Hebrew: / ; Ashkenazim, Ashkenazic pronunciation: ; Modern Israeli Hebrew, Modern Hebrew pronunciation: ), or phylacteries, are a set of small black leather boxes with leather straps containing scrolls o ...

'' and 7 ''

mezuzot A ''mezuzah'' ( "doorpost"; plural: ''mezuzot'') is a piece of parchment inscribed with specific Hebrew language, Hebrew verses from the Torah, which Jews affix in a small case to the doorposts of their homes. These verses are the Biblical pa ...

''. ; Cave 5 Wadi Qumran Cave 5 was discovered in 1952, shortly after the discovery of Cave 4. Cave 5 produced approximately 25 manuscripts. ; Cave 6 Wadi Qumran Cave 6 was discovered alongside Cave 5 in 1952, shortly after the discovery of Cave 4. Cave 6 contained fragments of about 31 manuscripts. ; Cave 7 7Q4

Wadi Qumran Cave 7 yielded fewer than 20 fragments of Greek documents, including 7Q2 (the "

Letter of Jeremiah The Letter of Jeremiah, also known as the Epistle of Jeremiah, is a deuterocanonical book of the Old Testament; this letter is attributed to Jeremiah and addressed to the Jews who were about to be carried away as captives to Babylon by Nebuchadnez ...

" = Baruch 6),

7Q5 Among the Dead Sea Scrolls, 7Q5 is the designation for a small Greek papyrus fragment discovered in Qumran List of manuscripts from Qumran Cave 7, Cave 7. It contains about 18 legible or partially legible Greek letters and was published in 1962 ...

(which became the subject of much speculation in later decades), and a Greek copy of a scroll of Enoch. Cave 7 also produced several inscribed potsherds and jars.Humbert and Chambon, ''Excavations of Khirbet Qumran and Ain Feshkha'', 67. ; Cave 8 Wadi Qumran Cave 8, along with caves 7 and 9, is one of the only caves that are accessible by passing through the settlement at Qumran. Carved into the southern end of the Qumran plateau, cave 8 was excavated by archaeologists in 1957. Cave 8 produced five fragments: Genesis (8QGen), Psalms (8QPs), a tefillin fragment (8QPhyl), a mezuzah (8QMez), and a hymn (8QHymn). Cave 8 also produced several tefillin cases, a box of leather objects, many lamps, jars, and the sole of a leather shoe. ; Cave 9 Wadi Qumran Cave 9, along with caves 7 and 8, was one of the only caves that are accessible by passing through the settlement at Qumran. Carved into the southern end of the Qumran plateau, Cave 9 was excavated by archaeologists in 1957. There was only one manuscript fragment found in Cave 9. ; Cave 10 In Qumran Cave 10 archaeologists found two

ostraca An ostracon (Greek language, Greek: ''ostrakon'', plural ''ostraka'') is a piece of pottery, usually broken off from a vase or other earthenware vessel. In an archaeology, archaeological or epigraphy, epigraphical context, ''ostraca'' refer ...

with writing on them, along with an unknown symbol on a grey stone slab. ; Cave 11

Wadi Qumran Cave 11 was discovered in 1956 and yielded 21 texts of the Dead Sea Scrolls, some of which were quite lengthy. The

Temple Scroll The Temple Scroll () is the longest of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Among the discoveries at Qumran it is designated: 11QTemple Scrolla (11Q19 1QTa. It describes a Jewish temple, along with extensive detailed regulations about sacrifices and temple prac ...

, so called because more than half of it pertains to the construction of the

Temple of Jerusalem The Temple in Jerusalem, or alternatively the Holy Temple (; , ), refers to the two religious structures that served as the central places of worship for Israelites and Jews on the modern-day Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem. Accord ...

, was found in Cave 11 and is by far the longest scroll. It is 26.7 feet (8.15 m) long; its original length may have been over 28 feet (8.75 m). The Temple Scroll was regarded by scholar

Yigael Yadin Yigael Yadin ( ; 20 March 1917 – 28 June 1984) was an Israeli archeologist, soldier and politician. He was the second Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces and Deputy Prime Minister from 1977 to 1981. Biography Yigael Sukenik (later Y ...

as "The Torah According to the Essenes". On the other hand, Hartmut Stegemann, a contemporary and friend of Yadin, believes the scroll was not to be regarded as such but was a document without exceptional significance. Stegemann notes that it is not mentioned or cited in any known Essene writing. An

eschatological Eschatology (; ) concerns expectations of the end of present age, human history, or the world itself. The end of the world or end times is predicted by several world religions (both Abrahamic and non-Abrahamic), which teach that negative world ...

fragment about the biblical figure

Melchizedek In the Hebrew Bible, Melchizedek was the king of Salem and priest of (often translated as 'most high God'). He is first mentioned in Genesis 14:18–20, where he brings out bread and wine and then blesses Abraham, and El Elyon or "the Lord, Go ...

( 11Q13) was found in Cave 11. Cave 11 also produced a copy of Jubilees, and a proto-Masoretic text of the

Torah scroll A Sephardic Torah scroll rolled to the first paragraph of the Shema An Ashkenazi Torah scroll rolled to the Decalogue file:Keneseth Eliyahoo Synagogue, Interior, Tora Cases.jpg">Torah cases at Knesset Eliyahoo Synagogue, Mumbai, India ...

(only a fragment of the

Book of Leviticus The Book of Leviticus (, from , ; , , 'And He called'; ) is the third book of the Torah (the Pentateuch) and of the Old Testament, also known as the Third Book of Moses. Many hypotheses presented by scholars as to its origins agree that it de ...

surviving), known as the

Paleo-Hebrew Leviticus Scroll Paleo-Hebrew Leviticus Scroll, known also as 11QpaleoLev, is an ancient text preserved in one of the Qumran group of caves, which provides a rare glimpse of the script used formerly by the Israelites in writing Torah scrolls during pre- exilic hi ...

. According to former chief editor of the Dead Sea Scrolls editorial team

John Strugnell John Strugnell (25 May 1930, Barnet, Hertfordshire, England – 30 November 2007, Boston, Massachusetts) was an English Professor Emeritus at the Harvard Divinity School and a former editor-in-chief of the Dead Sea Scrolls project. Strugn ...

, there are at least four privately owned scrolls from Cave 11 that have not yet been made available for scholars. Among them is a complete Aramaic manuscript of the Book of Enoch. ; Cave 12 Cave 12 was discovered in February 2017 on cliffs west of Qumran, near the north-western shore of the Dead Sea. Archaeological examination found pickaxes and empty broken scroll jars, indicating that the cave had been discovered and looted in the 1950s. One of the joint

Hebrew University of Jerusalem The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI; ) is an Israeli public university, public research university based in Jerusalem. Co-founded by Albert Einstein and Chaim Weizmann in July 1918, the public university officially opened on 1 April 1925. ...

and

Liberty University Liberty University (LU), known simply as Liberty, is a Private university, private Evangelicalism in the United States, evangelical Christian university in Lynchburg, Virginia, United States. It is affiliated with the Southern Baptist Conservativ ...

project's lead researchers, Oren Gutfeld, stated, "Although at the end of the day no scroll was found, and instead we 'only' found a piece of parchment rolled up in a jug that was being processed for writing, the findings indicate beyond any doubt that the cave contained scrolls that were stolen." ; Fragments with unknown provenance Some fragments of scrolls have neither significant archaeological

provenance Provenance () is the chronology of the ownership, custody or location of a historical object. The term was originally mostly used in relation to works of art, but is now used in similar senses in a wide range of fields, including archaeology, p ...

nor records that reveal in which designated Qumran cave area they were found. They are believed to have come from Wadi Qumran caves but are just as likely to have come from other archaeological sites in the Judaean Desert area.Grossman, Maxine. ''Rediscovering the Dead Sea Scrolls''. pp. 66–67. 2010. These fragments have therefore been designated to the temporary "X" series.

Gallery

File:Dead Sea Scroll 175, complete, Testimonia, from Qumran Cave 4, the Jordan Museum in Amman.jpg, Dead Sea Scroll 175, complete, Testimonia, from Qumran Cave 4, the Jordan Museum in Amman File:Dead Sea Scroll 28a from Qumran Cave 1, complete, the Jordan Museum in Amman.jpg, Dead Sea Scroll 28a from Qumran Cave 1, complete, the Jordan Museum in Amman File:The War Scroll - Dead Sea Scroll.jpg, The War Scroll, found in Qumran Cave 1. File:1QIsa b.jpg, A portion of the second discovered copy of the

, 1QIsa^b. File:Part of Dead Sea Scroll 28a from Qumran Cave 1. The Jordan Museum, Amman.jpg, Part of Dead Sea Scroll 28a from Qumran Cave 1. The Jordan Museum, Amman File:Dead Sea Scroll, Pesher Isaiah, from Qumran Cave 4. The Jordan Museum, Amman.jpg, Dead Sea Scroll, Pesher Isaiah, from Qumran Cave 4. The Jordan Museum, Amman File:Dead Sea Scroll 175, Testimonia, from Qumran Cave 4. The Jordan Museum, Amman.jpg, Dead Sea Scroll 175, Testimonia, from Qumran Cave 4. The Jordan Museum, Amman File:Dead Sea Scroll 109, Qohelet or Ecclesiastes, from Qumran Cave 4. The Jordan Museum, Amman.jpg, Dead Sea Scroll 109, Qohelet or Ecclesiastes, from Qumran Cave 4. The Jordan Museum, Amman File:Dear Sea Scrolls at the Jordan Museum in Amman.jpg, Dead Sea Scrolls at the Jordan Museum in Amman File:The so-called Copper Dead Sea Scrolls at the Jordan Museum, from Qumran Cave 3, 1st century CE.jpg, Strips of the Copper Dead Sea Scroll at the Jordan Museum, from Qumran Cave 3, 1st century CE File:Strip 11, part of the Copper Dear Sea Scrolls, from Qumran Cave 3, Jordan Museum.jpg, Strip 11 of the Copper Dead Sea Scroll, from Qumran Cave 3, Jordan Museum File:Strip 15, part of the Copper Dear Sea Scrolls, from Qumran Cave 3, Jordan Museum.jpg, Strip 15 of the Copper Dead Sea Scroll, from Qumran Cave 3, Jordan Museum File:Strip 13, part of the Copper Dear Sea Scrolls, from Qumran Cave 3, Jordan Museum.jpg, Strip 13 of the Copper Dead Sea Scroll, from Qumran Cave 3, Jordan Museum File:Strips 1 and 2, parts of the Copper Dear Sea Scrolls, from Qumran Cave 3, Jordan Museum.jpg, Strips 1 and 2 of the Copper Dead Sea Scroll, from Qumran Cave 3, Jordan Museum File:Dead Sea Scroll 109, Qohelet or Ecclesiastes, from Qumran Cave 4, the Jordan Museum in Amman.jpg, Dead Sea Scroll 109, Qohelet or Ecclesiastes, from Qumran Cave 4, the Jordan Museum in Amman File:Dead Sea Scroll 109, Qohelet or Ecclesiastes, from Qumran Cave 4, at the Jordan Museum in Amman.jpg, Dead Sea Scroll 109, Qohelet or Ecclesiastes, from Qumran Cave 4, at the Jordan Museum in Amman File:Dead Sea Scroll, Pesher Isaiah, from Qumran Cave 4, the Jordan Museum in Amman.jpg, Dead Sea Scroll, Pesher Isaiah, from Qumran Cave 4, the Jordan Museum in Amman File:Dead Sea Scroll 175, Testimonia, from Qumran Cave 4, the Jordan Museum in Amman.jpg, Dead Sea Scroll 175, Testimonia, from Qumran Cave 4, the Jordan Museum in Amman File:Detail, Dead Sea Scroll 175, Testimonia, from Qumran Cave 4, the Jordan Museum in Amman.jpg, Detail, Dead Sea Scroll 175, Testimonia, from Qumran Cave 4, the Jordan Museum in Amman File:Dead Sea Scroll 28a from Qumran Cave 1, the Jordan Museum in Amman.jpg, Dead Sea Scroll 28a from Qumran Cave 1, the Jordan Museum in Amman File:Part of Dead Sea Scroll 28a from Qumran Cave 1, the Jordan Museum in Amman.jpg, Part of Dead Sea Scroll 28a from Qumran Cave 1, the Jordan Museum in Amman File:Part of Dead Sea Scroll 28a from Qumran Cave 1, at the Jordan Museum in Amman.jpg, Part of Dead Sea Scroll 28a from Qumran Cave 1, at the Jordan Museum in Amman File:Psalm 23 Dead Sea Scrolls.jpg, Dead Sea Scroll fragment 5/6HEV PS found in the Cave of Letters at Nahal Hever

Origin

There has been much debate about the origin of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The dominant theory remains that the scrolls were produced by the Essenes, a sect of Jews living at nearby Qumran, but this theory has come to be challenged by several modern scholars.

Qumran–Essene theory

The view among scholars, almost universally held until the 1990s, is the "Qumran–Essene" hypothesis originally posited by Roland Guérin de Vaux and Józef Tadeusz Milik, though independently both

Eliezer Sukenik Eleazar Lipa Sukenik (; 12 August 1889 – 28 February 1953) was an Israeli archaeologist and professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is best known for helping establish the Department of Archaeology at the Hebrew University and being ...

and Butrus Sowmy of St Mark's Monastery connected scrolls with the Essenes well before any excavations at Qumran. The Qumran–Essene theory holds that the scrolls were written by the Essenes or by another Jewish sectarian group residing at Khirbet Qumran. They composed the scrolls and ultimately hid them in the nearby caves during the Jewish Revolt sometime between 66 and 68 CE. The site of Qumran was destroyed and the scrolls never recovered. Arguments supporting this theory include: * There are striking similarities between the description of an initiation ceremony of new members in the Community Rule and descriptions of the Essene initiation ceremony mentioned in the works of Flavius

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 ...

, a Jewish-Roman historian of the Second Temple period. * Josephus mentioned the Essenes as sharing property among the members of the community, as does the Community Rule. * During the excavation of Khirbet Qumran, two inkwells and plastered elements thought to be tables were found, offering evidence that some form of writing was done there. More inkwells were discovered nearby. De Vaux called this area the "

scriptorium A scriptorium () was a writing room in medieval European monasteries for the copying and illuminating of manuscripts by scribes. The term has perhaps been over-used—only some monasteries had special rooms set aside for scribes. Often they ...

" based upon this discovery. * Several Jewish ritual baths (Hebrew: ) were discovered at Qumran, offering evidence of an observant

Jew Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, religion, and community are highly inte ...

ish presence at the site. *

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 ...

(a geographer writing after the fall of

in 70 CE) described a group of Essenes living in a desert community on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea near the ruined town of '

Ein Gedi Ein Gedi (, ), also spelled En Gedi, meaning "Spring (hydrology), spring of the goat, kid", is an oasis, an Archaeological site, archeological site and a nature reserve in Israel, located west of the Dead Sea, near Masada and the Qumran Caves. ...

Qumran–Sectarian theory

Qumran–Sectarian theories are variations on the Qumran–Essene theory. The main point of departure from the Qumran–Essene theory is hesitation to link the Dead Sea Scrolls specifically with the Essenes. Most proponents of the Qumran–Sectarian theory posit a group of Jews living in or near Qumran were responsible for the Dead Sea Scrolls but do not necessarily conclude that the sectarians were Essenes. A specific variation on the Qumran–Sectarian theory emerged in the 1990s that has gained much recent popularity is the work of Lawrence H. Schiffman, who proposes that the community was led by a group of Zadokite priests (

Sadducees The Sadducees (; ) were a sect of Jews active in Judea during the Second Temple period, from the second century BCE to the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE. The Sadducees are described in contemporary literary sources in contrast to ...

). The most important document in support of this view is the "Miqsat Ma'ase Ha-Torah" (

4QMMT 4QMMT, also known as MMT, or the Halakhic Letter, is a reconstructed text from manuscripts that were part of the Dead Sea Scrolls discovered at Qumran in the Judean desert. The manuscript fragments used to reconstruct 4QMMT were found in Cave 4 at ...

), which cites purity laws (such as the transfer of impurities) identical to those attributed in rabbinic writings to the Sadducees. 4QMMT also reproduces a festival calendar that follows Sadducee principles for the dating of certain festival days.

Christian origin theory

Spanish

Jesuit The Society of Jesus (; abbreviation: S.J. or SJ), also known as the Jesuit Order or the Jesuits ( ; ), is a religious order (Catholic), religious order of clerics regular of pontifical right for men in the Catholic Church headquartered in Rom ...

José O'Callaghan Martínez argued in the 1960s that one fragment (7Q5) preserves a portion of text from the

New Testament The New Testament (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus in Christianity, Jesus, as well as events relating to Christianity in the 1st century, first-century Christianit ...

Gospel of Mark The Gospel of Mark is the second of the four canonical Gospels and one of the three synoptic Gospels, synoptic Gospels. It tells of the ministry of Jesus from baptism of Jesus, his baptism by John the Baptist to his death, the Burial of Jesus, ...

6:52–53. This theory was scrutinized in the year 2000 by

paleographic Palaeography ( UK) or paleography ( US) (ultimately from , , 'old', and , , 'to write') is the study and academic discipline of historical writing systems. It encompasses the historicity of manuscripts and texts, subsuming deciphering and dati ...

analysis of the particular fragment. However, this faced some contention, and O'Callaghan's theory remains an area of great dispute. Later analyses in 2004 and 2018 lent credence to O'Callaghan's original assertion.

Robert Eisenman Robert Eisenman (born 1937) is an American biblical scholar, historian, archaeologist, and poet. He is currently professor of Middle East religions, archaeology, and Islamic law and director of the Institute for the Study of Judaeo-Christian Orig ...

has advanced the theory that some scrolls describe the

early Christian Early Christianity, otherwise called the Early Church or Paleo-Christianity, describes the historical era of the Christian religion up to the First Council of Nicaea in 325. Christianity spread from the Levant, across the Roman Empire, and be ...

community. Eisenman also argues that the careers of

James the Just James the Just, or a variation of James, brother of the Lord ( from , and , , can also be Anglicized as "Jacob"), was, according to the New Testament, a brother of Jesus. He was the first Jewish bishop of Jerusalem. Traditionally, it is beli ...

and

Paul the Apostle Paul, also named Saul of Tarsus, commonly known as Paul the Apostle and Saint Paul, was a Apostles in the New Testament, Christian apostle ( AD) who spread the Ministry of Jesus, teachings of Jesus in the Christianity in the 1st century, first ...

correspond to events recorded in some of these documents.

Jerusalem origin theory

Some scholars have argued that the scrolls were the product of Jews living in Jerusalem who hid the scrolls in the caves near Qumran while fleeing from the

Romans Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy *Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of Roman civilization *Epistle to the Romans, shortened to Romans, a letter w ...

during the

destruction of Jerusalem The siege of Jerusalem in 70 CE was the decisive event of the First Jewish–Roman War (66–73 CE), a major rebellion against Roman rule in the province of Judaea. Led by Titus, Roman forces besieged the Jewish capital, which had beco ...

in 70 CE. Karl Heinrich Rengstorf first proposed in the 1960s that the Dead Sea Scrolls originated at the library of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem. Later,

Norman Golb Norman Golb (15 January 1928 – 29 December 2020) was a scholar of Jewish history and the Ludwig Rosenberger Professor in Jewish History and Civilization at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. Life Golb was born in Chicago, Ill ...

suggested that the scrolls were the product of multiple libraries in Jerusalem and not necessarily the Jerusalem Temple library. Proponents of the Jerusalem origin theory point to the diversity of thought and handwriting among the scrolls as evidence against a Qumran origin of the scrolls. Several archaeologists have also accepted an origin of the scrolls other than Qumran, including

Yizhar Hirschfeld Yizhar Hirschfeld (; 1950 – 16 November 2006) was an Israeli archaeologist studying Greco-Roman and Byzantine archaeology. He was an associate professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and director of excavations at a number of sites aroun ...

and more recently Yizhak Magen and Yuval Peleg, who all understand the remains of Qumran to be those of a Hasmonean fort that was reused during later periods.

Physical characteristics

Radiocarbon dating

Parchment from a number of the Dead Sea Scrolls has been

carbon dated Radiocarbon dating (also referred to as carbon dating or carbon-14 dating) is a method for determining the age of an object containing organic material by using the properties of radiocarbon, a radioactive isotope of carbon. The method was ...

. The initial test performed in 1950 was on a piece of linen from one of the caves. This test gave an indicative dating of 33 CE plus or minus 200 years, eliminating early hypotheses relating the scrolls to the

Medieval period In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the 5th to the late 15th centuries, similarly to the post-classical period of World history (field), global history. It began with the fall of the West ...

. Since then two large series of tests have been performed on the scrolls. The results were summarized by VanderKam and Flint, who said the tests give "strong reason for thinking that most of the Qumran manuscripts belong to the last two centuries BCE and the first century CE." In 2025, a series of radiocarbon tests were carried out on samples from thirty scrolls. The samples were distributed as 25 from the

, 1 from

, 2 from the

Murabbaat Wadi Murabba'at, also known as Nahal Darga, is a ravine in the West Bank, cut by a seasonal stream which runs from the Judean Desert east of Bethlehem past the Herodium down to the Dead Sea 18 km south of Khirbet Qumran. It was here that Jew ...

caves, and 2 from the

Nahal Hever Nahal Hever () or Wadi al-Khabat (Arabic) is an intermittent stream (wadi) in the Judean Desert, that flows through the West Bank and Israel, from the area of Yatta to the Dead Sea. The Hebrew name is derived from "Hevron", the Hebrew name of the ...

caves. The study also made use of an AI-based date-prediction model called "Enoch", which was trained by applying

Bayesian ridge regression Bayesian linear regression is a type of conditional modeling in which the mean of one variable is described by a linear combination of other variables, with the goal of obtaining the posterior probability of the regression coefficients (as well ...

on the handwriting-style descriptors of 24 of the 14C-dated samples, for the paleographic dating of some 135 previously undated manuscripts.

Paleographic dating

Analysis of letter forms, or

palaeography Palaeography (American and British English spelling differences#ae and oe, UK) or paleography (American and British English spelling differences#ae and oe, US) (ultimately from , , 'old', and , , 'to write') is the study and academic disciplin ...

, was applied to the texts of the Dead Sea Scrolls by a variety of scholars in the field. Major linguistic analysis by

Cross A cross is a religious symbol consisting of two Intersection (set theory), intersecting Line (geometry), lines, usually perpendicular to each other. The lines usually run vertically and horizontally. A cross of oblique lines, in the shape of t ...

and Avigad dates fragments from 225 BCE to 50 CE.Grossman, Maxine. "Rediscovering the Dead Sea Scrolls." pp. 48–51. 2010. These dates were determined by examining the size, variability, and style of the text. The same fragments were later analysed using radiocarbon dating and were dated to an estimated range of 385 BCE to 82 CE with a 68% accuracy rate.

Ink and parchment

The scrolls were analysed using a

cyclotron A cyclotron is a type of particle accelerator invented by Ernest Lawrence in 1929–1930 at the University of California, Berkeley, and patented in 1932. Lawrence, Ernest O. ''Method and apparatus for the acceleration of ions'', filed: Januar ...

at the

University of California, Davis The University of California, Davis (UC Davis, UCD, or Davis) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Davis, California, United States. It is the northernmost of the ten campuses of the University ...

, where it was found that all black ink was

carbon black Carbon black (with subtypes acetylene black, channel black, furnace black, lamp black and thermal black) is a material produced by the incomplete combustion of coal tar, vegetable matter, or petroleum products, including fuel oil, fluid cataly ...

. The red ink on the scrolls was found to be made with

cinnabar Cinnabar (; ), or cinnabarite (), also known as ''mercurblende'' is the bright scarlet to brick-red form of Mercury sulfide, mercury(II) sulfide (HgS). It is the most common source ore for refining mercury (element), elemental mercury and is t ...

(HgS, mercury sulfide). There are only four uses of this red ink in the entire collection of Dead Sea Scroll fragments. The black inks found on the scrolls are mostly made of carbon soot from olive oil lamps. Honey, oil, vinegar, and water were often added to the mixture to thin the ink to a proper consistency for writing.

Galls Galls (from the Latin , 'oak-apple') or ''cecidia'' (from the Greek , anything gushing out) are a kind of swelling growth on the external tissues of plants. Plant galls are abnormal outgrowths of plant tissues, similar to benign tumors or wart ...

were sometimes added to the ink to make it more resilient. In order to apply the ink to the scrolls, its writers used

reed pen A reed pen ( '; singular ') or bamboo pen () is a writing implement made by cutting and shaping a single Phragmites, reed straw or length of bamboo. History and manufacture Reed pens with regular features such as a split nib (pen), nib have ...

s.Magness, Jodi. ''The Archaeology of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls''. p. 33. 2002. The Dead Sea Scrolls were written on

made of processed animal hide known as

vellum Vellum is prepared animal skin or membrane, typically used as writing material. It is often distinguished from parchment, either by being made from calfskin (rather than the skin of other animals), or simply by being of a higher quality. Vellu ...

(approximately 85.5–90.5% of the scrolls),

(estimated at 8–13% of the scrolls), and sheets of

bronze Bronze is an alloy consisting primarily of copper, commonly with about 12–12.5% tin and often with the addition of other metals (including aluminium, manganese, nickel, or zinc) and sometimes non-metals (such as phosphorus) or metalloid ...

composed of about 99%

copper Copper is a chemical element; it has symbol Cu (from Latin ) and atomic number 29. It is a soft, malleable, and ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. A freshly exposed surface of pure copper has a pinkish-orang ...

and 1%

tin Tin is a chemical element; it has symbol Sn () and atomic number 50. A silvery-colored metal, tin is soft enough to be cut with little force, and a bar of tin can be bent by hand with little effort. When bent, a bar of tin makes a sound, the ...

(approximately 1.5% of the scrolls). For those scrolls written on animal hides, scholars with the

Israeli Antiquities Authority The Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA, ; , before 1990, the Israel Department of Antiquities) is an independent Israeli governmental authority responsible for enforcing the 1978 Law of Antiquities. The IAA regulates excavation and conservatio ...

(IAA), by use of DNA testing for assembly purposes, believe that there may be a hierarchy in the religious importance of the texts based on which type of animal was used to create the hide. Scrolls written on

goat The goat or domestic goat (''Capra hircus'') is a species of Caprinae, goat-antelope that is mostly kept as livestock. It was domesticated from the wild goat (''C. aegagrus'') of Southwest Asia and Eastern Europe. The goat is a member of the ...

and calf hides are considered by scholars to be more significant in nature, while those written on

gazelle A gazelle is one of many antelope species in the genus ''Gazella'' . There are also seven species included in two further genera; '' Eudorcas'' and '' Nanger'', which were formerly considered subgenera of ''Gazella''. A third former subgenus, ' ...

ibex An ibex ( : ibex, ibexes or ibices) is any of several species of wild goat (genus ''Capra''), distinguished by the male's large recurved horns, which are transversely ridged in front. Ibex are found in Eurasia, North Africa and East Africa. T ...

are considered to be less religiously significant in nature. Tests by the National Institute of Nuclear Physics in

Sicily Sicily (Italian language, Italian and ), officially the Sicilian Region (), is an island in the central Mediterranean Sea, south of the Italian Peninsula in continental Europe and is one of the 20 regions of Italy, regions of Italy. With 4. ...

have suggested that the origin of parchment of select Dead Sea Scroll fragments is from the Qumran area, by using

X-ray An X-ray (also known in many languages as Röntgen radiation) is a form of high-energy electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength shorter than those of ultraviolet rays and longer than those of gamma rays. Roughly, X-rays have a wavelength ran ...

and

particle-induced X-ray emission Particle-Induced X-Ray Emission or Proton-Induced X-Ray Emission (PIXE) is a technique used for determining the elemental composition of a material or a sample. When a material is exposed to an ion beam, atomic interactions occur that give off ...

testing of the water used to make the parchment that were compared with the water from the area aroundQumran.

Preservation

The Dead Sea Scrolls that were found were originally preserved by the arid conditions present within the Qumran area adjoining the Dead Sea. In addition, the lack of the use of tanning materials on the parchment of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the very low airflow in the caves also contributed significantly to their preservation. Some of the scrolls were found stored in clay jars, further helping to preserve them from deterioration. The original handling of the scrolls by archaeologists and scholars was done inappropriately, and, along with their storage in an uncontrolled environment, they began a process of more rapid deterioration than they had experienced at Qumran. During the first few years in the late 1940s and early 1950s, adhesive tape used to join fragments and seal cracks caused significant damage to the documents. The government of Jordan had recognized the urgency of protecting the scrolls from deterioration and the presence of the deterioration among the scrolls.Burrows, Millar. ''More Light on the Dead Sea Scrolls''. 1958. However, the government did not have adequate funds to purchase all the scrolls for their protection and agreed to have foreign institutions purchase the scrolls and have them held at their museum in Jerusalem until they could be "adequately studied". In early 1953, the scrolls were moved to the Palestine Archaeological Museum (commonly called the

Rockefeller Museum The Rockefeller Archeological Museum, formerly the Palestine Archaeological Museum ("PAM"; 1938–1967), is an archaeology museum located in East Jerusalem, next to Herod's Gate, that houses a large collection of artifacts unearthed in the exca ...

) in East Jerusalem and through their transportation suffered more deterioration and damage. The museum was underfunded and had limited resources with which to examine the scrolls, and as a result conditions of the "scrollery" and storage area were left relatively uncontrolled by modern standards. The museum had left most of the fragments and scrolls lying between window glass, trapping the moisture in with them, causing an acceleration in the deterioration process. During the

Suez Crisis The Suez Crisis, also known as the Second Arab–Israeli War, the Tripartite Aggression in the Arab world and the Sinai War in Israel, was a British–French–Israeli invasion of Egypt in 1956. Israel invaded on 29 October, having done so w ...

the scrolls collection of the Palestine Archaeological Museum was stored in the vault of the

Ottoman Bank The Ottoman Bank (), known from 1863 to 1925 as the Imperial Ottoman Bank (, ) and correspondingly referred to by its French acronym BIO, was a bank that played a major role in the financial history of the Ottoman Empire. By the early 20th cent ...

Amman Amman ( , ; , ) is the capital and the largest city of Jordan, and the country's economic, political, and cultural center. With a population of four million as of 2021, Amman is Jordan's primate city and is the largest city in the Levant ...

, Jordan.Fitzmyer, Joseph A. ''Responses to 101 Questions on the Dead Sea Scrolls''. 1992. Damp conditions from temporary storage of the scrolls in the Ottoman Bank vault from 1956 to 1957 led to a more rapid rate of deterioration of the scrolls. The conditions caused mildew to develop on the scrolls and fragments, and some fragments were partially destroyed or made illegible by the glue and paper of the manila envelopes in which they were stored while in the vault. By 1958 it was noted that up to 5% of some of the scrolls had completely deteriorated. Many of the texts had become illegible, and many of the parchments had darkened considerably. Until the 1970s, the scrolls continued to deteriorate because of poor storage arrangements, exposure to different adhesives, and being stored in moist environments. Fragments written on parchment (rather than papyrus or bronze) in the hands of private collectors and scholars suffered an even worse fate than those in the hands of the museum, with large portions of fragments being reported to have disappeared by 1966. In the late 1960s, the deterioration was becoming a major concern with scholars and museum officials alike. Scholars John Allegro and Sir Francis Frank were among the first to strongly advocate for better preservation techniques. Early attempts made by both the British and Israel museums to remove the adhesive tape ended up exposing the parchment to an array of chemicals, including " British Leather Dressing," and darkening some of them significantly. In the 1970s and 1980s, other preservation attempts were made that included removing the glass plates and replacing them with cardboard and removing pressure against the plates that held the scrolls in storage; however, the fragments and scrolls continued to rapidly deteriorate during this time. In 1991, the IAA established a temperature-controlled laboratory for the storage and preservation of the scrolls. The actions and preservation methods of Rockefeller Museum staff were concentrated on the removal of tape, oils, metals, salt, and other contaminants. The fragments and scrolls are preserved using acid-free cardboard and stored in

solander box A Solander box ("S" may also be in lowercase), or clamshell case (mainly in American English), is a book-form case used for storing manuscripts, maps, prints, documents, old and precious books, etc. It is commonly used in archives, print rooms an ...

es in the climate-controlled storage area. Nine tiny tefellin strips were rediscovered by the IAA in 2014, after they had been stored unopened for six decades following their excavation in 1952.

Photography and assembly

Since the Dead Sea Scrolls were initially held by different parties during and after the excavation process, they were not all photographed by the same organization.

First photographs (1948)

The first individual to photograph a portion of the collection was Trever, who was a resident for the American Schools of Oriental Research. He photographed three of the scrolls discovered in Cave 1 on 21 February 1948, both on black-and-white and color film. Although an amateur photographer, the quality of his photographs often exceeded the visibility of the scrolls themselves as, over the years, the ink of the texts quickly deteriorated after they were removed from their linen wrappings.

Infrared photography and plate assembly (1952–1967)

A majority of the collection from the Qumran caves was acquired by the Palestine Archaeological Museum. The museum had the scrolls photographed by

Najib Albina Najib Anton Albina (2 January 1901 – 23 July 1983) was the Palestinians, Palestinian Arab master photographer of the Rockefeller Museum, Palestine Archaeological Museum and, in that position, took the first original sets of photographs of the D ...

, a local Arab photographer trained by

Lewis Larsson Lewis Larsson (14 March 1881 – 3 August 1958), was born Hol Lars Larsson in Nås, Sweden, and served as the '' de facto'' head of the Photographic Department of the American Colony in Jerusalem, British Mandate Palestine. Larsson was renowne ...

of the American Colony in Jerusalem, Between 1952 and 1967, Albina documented the five-stage process of the sorting and assembly of the scrolls, done by the curator and staff of the Palestine Archaeological Museum, using infrared photography. Using a process known today as broadband fluorescence infrared photography, or NIR photography, Najib and the team at the museum produced over 1,750 photographic plates of the scrolls and fragments. The photographs were taken with the scrolls laid out on animal skin using large format film, which caused the text to stand out, making the plates especially useful for assembling fragments. These are the earliest photographs of the museum's collection, which was the most complete in the world at the time, and they recorded the fragments and scrolls before their further decay in storage, so they are often considered the best recorded copies of the scrolls.

Digital infrared imaging (1993–2012)

Beginning in 1993, the United States NASA, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) used digital infrared imaging technology to produce photographs of Dead Sea Scrolls fragments. In partnership with the Ancient Biblical Manuscript Center and West Semitic Research, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory successfully worked to expand on the use of infrared photography previously used to evaluate ancient manuscripts by expanding the range of spectra at which images are photographed. NASA used multispectral imaging adapted from its remote sensing and planetary probes in order to reveal previously illegible text on the fragments. The process uses a liquid crystal tunable filter in order to photograph the scrolls at specific wavelengths of light and, as a result, image distortion is significantly diminished. This method was used with select fragments to reveal text and details a larger light spectrum could not reveal. The camera and digital imaging assembly were developed specifically for the purpose of photographing illegible ancient texts. On 18 December 2012 the first output of this project was launched together with Google on the dedicated site ''Deadseascrolls.org.il.'' The site contains both digitizations of old images taken in the 1950s and about 1,000 images taken with multispectral imaging.

DNA scroll assembly (2006–2020)

Scientists with the IAA have used DNA from the parchment on which the fragments were written, in concert with infrared digital photography, to assist in the reassembly of the scrolls. For scrolls written on parchment made from animal hide and papyrus, scientists with the museum are using DNA code to associate fragments with different scrolls and to help scholars determine which scrolls may hold greater significance based on the type of material that was used. In a paper published in 2020 in the journal ''Cell'', researchers from Tel Aviv University have shown that DNA extracted from the scrolls can be used to sort different scroll fragments not only based on the animal species but also based on variations in the nuclear genome of individual fragments. This effort enabled the researchers to match different fragments to each other based on their genetics and separate fragments which were falsely connected in the past.

Digitization project (2011–2016)

In partnership with Google, the Museum of Jerusalem is working to photograph the Dead Sea Scrolls and make them available to the public digitally, albeit not in the public domain. The lead photographer of the project, Ardon Bar-Hama, and his team are utilizing the Alpa 12 MAX camera accompanied with a Leaf (Israeli company), Leaf Aptus-II back to produce ultra-high resolution digital images of the scrolls and fragments. With photos taken at 1,200 Pixel, megapixels, the results are digital images that can be used to distinguish details that are invisible to the naked eye. In order to minimize damage to the scrolls and fragments, photographers are using a 1/4000th of a second Exposure (photography), exposure time and UV-protected flash tubes. The digital photography project was estimated in 2011 to cost 3.5 million U.S. dollars.

Scholarly examination

After most of the scrolls and fragments were moved to the Palestine Archaeological Museum in 1953, scholars began to assemble them and log them for translation and study in a room that became known as the "scrollery". The text of the Dead Sea Scrolls is written in four languages:

, Aramaic language, Aramaic, Greek language, Greek, and

Publication

Physical publication

Some of the fragments and scrolls were published early. Most of the longer, more complete scrolls were published soon after their discovery. All the writings in Cave 1 appeared in print between 1950 and 1956; those from eight other caves were released in 1963; and in 1965 the Psalms Scroll from Cave 11 was published. Their translations into English soon followed. Publication of the scrolls has taken many decades, and delays have been a source of academic controversy. The scrolls were controlled by a small group of scholars headed by John Strugnell, while a majority of scholars had access neither to the scrolls nor even to photographs of the text. Scholars such as Norman Golb, publishers and writers such as Hershel Shanks, and many others argued for decades for publishing the texts, so that they become available to researchers. This controversy only ended in 1991, when the Biblical Archaeology Society was able to publish the "Facsimile Edition of the Dead Sea Scrolls", after an intervention of the Israeli government and the IAA. In 1991 Emanuel Tov was appointed as the chairman of the Dead Sea Scrolls Foundation, and publication of the scrolls followed in the same year. The majority of the scrolls consist of tiny, brittle fragments, which were published at a pace considered by many to be excessively slow. During early assembly and translation work by scholars through the Rockefeller Museum from the 1950s through the 1960s, access to the unpublished documents was limited to the editorial committee.

''Discoveries in the Judaean Desert'' (1955–2009)

The content of the scrolls was published in a 40-volume series by Oxford University Press between 1955 and 2009 known as ''

''. In 1952 the Jordanian Department of Antiquities assembled a team of scholars to begin examining, assembling, and translating the scrolls with the intent of publishing them. The initial publication, assembled by Dominique Barthélemy and Józef Milik, was published as ''Qumran Cave 1'' in 1955. After a series of other publications in the late 1980s and early 1990s and with the appointment of the respected Dutch-Israeli textual scholar Emanuel Tov as editor-in-chief of the Dead Sea Scrolls Publication Project in 1990 publication of the scrolls accelerated. Tov's team had published five volumes covering the Cave 4 documents by 1995. Between 1990 and 2009, Tov helped the team produce 32 volumes. The final volume, Volume XL, was published in 2009.

''A Preliminary Edition of the Unpublished Dead Sea Scrolls'' (1991)

In 1991, researchers at Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion, Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, Ohio, Ben Zion Wacholder and Martin Abegg, announced the creation of a computer program that used previously published scrolls to reconstruct the unpublished texts. Officials at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, led by head librarian William Andrew Moffett, announced that they would allow researchers unrestricted access to the library's complete set of photographs of the scrolls. In the fall of that year, Wacholder published 17 documents that had been reconstructed in 1988 from a Concordance (publishing), concordance and had come into the hands of scholars outside of the international team; in the same month, there occurred the discovery and publication of a complete set of facsimiles of the Cave 4 materials at the Huntington Library. Thereafter, the officials of the IAA agreed to lift their long-standing restrictions on the use of the scrolls.

''A Facsimile Edition of the Dead Sea Scrolls'' (1991)

After further delays, attorney William John Cox undertook representation of an "undisclosed client", who had provided a complete set of the unpublished photographs, and contracted for their publication. Professors Robert Eisenman and James M. Robinson, James Robinson indexed the photographs and wrote an introduction to ''A Facsimile Edition of the Dead Sea Scrolls'', which was published by the Biblical Archaeology Society in 1991. Following the publication of the ''Facsimile Edition'', Professor Elisha Qimron sued Hershel Shanks, Eisenman, Robinson and the Biblical Archaeology Society for copyright infringement for publishing without authorization or attribution his decipherment of one of the scrolls, MMT. The District Court of Jerusalem found in favour of Qimron. The court issued a restraining order which prohibited the publication of the deciphered text, and ordered defendants to pay Qimron NIS 100,000 for infringing his copyright and the right of attribution. Defendants appealed the Supreme Court of Israel which approved the district court's decision. The Supreme Court further ordered that the defendants hand over to Qimron all the infringing copies. The decision met Israeli and international criticism from copyright law scholars.

The Facsimile Edition (2007–2008)

In November 2007 the Dead Sea Scrolls Foundation commissioned the London publisher Facsimile Editions Limited to produce a facsimile edition of The Great Isaiah Scroll (1QIs^a), The Order of the Community (1QS), and The Pesher to Habakkuk (1QpHab). The facsimile was produced from 1948 photographs and so more faithfully represents the condition of the Isaiah Scroll at the time of its discovery than does the current condition of the Isaiah Scroll. Of the first three facsimile sets, one was exhibited at the ''Early Christianity and the Dead Sea Scrolls'' exhibition in Seoul, South Korea, and a second set was purchased by the British Library in London. A further 46 sets including facsimiles of three fragments from Cave 4 (now in the collection of the National Archaeological Museum in Amman, Jordan) Testimonia (4Q175), Pesher Isaiah^b (4Q162) and Qohelet (4Q109) were announced in May 2009. The edition is strictly limited to 49 numbered sets of these reproductions on either specially prepared parchment paper or real parchment. The facsimiles have since been exhibited in ''Qumrân. Le secret des manuscrits de la mer Morte'' at the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, France (2010) and ''Verbum Domini'' at the Vatican City, Vatican, Rome, Italy (2012).

Digital publication

The text of nearly all of the non-biblical scrolls has been recorded and tagged for Morphology (linguistics), morphology by Martin Abegg, Jr., the Ben Zion Wacholder Professor of Dead Sea Scroll Studies at Trinity Western University located in Langley, British Columbia, Canada. It is available on handheld devices through Olive Tree Bible Software and Logos Bible Software. The text of almost all of the non-biblical texts was released on CD-ROM by publisher E.J. Brill in 2005."From Other Publishers: Dead Sea Scrolls Reader Released." http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/publications/insights/?vol=25&num=2&id=423 . The 2,400 page, six-volume series, was assembled by an editorial team led by Donald W. Parry and Emanuel Tov. Unlike the text translations in the physical publication, ''Discoveries in the Judaean Desert,'' the texts are sorted by genres that include religious law, parabiblical texts, calendrical and sapiental texts, and poetic and liturgical works. On 25 September 2011 the

Digital Dead Sea Scrolls site went online. It gives users access to searchable, high-resolution images of the scrolls, as well as short explanatory videos and background information on the texts and their history. , five complete scrolls from the Israel Museum have been digitized for the project and are accessible online: the Great Isaiah Scroll, the Community Rule Scroll, the Commentary on Habakkuk Scroll, the Temple Scroll, and the War Scroll.

Biblical significance

Before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the oldest Hebrew-language manuscripts of the Bible were Masoretic Text, Masoretic texts dating to the 10th century CE, such as the Aleppo Codex. Today, the oldest known extant manuscripts of the Masoretic Text date from approximately the 9th century. The biblical manuscripts found among the Dead Sea Scrolls push that date back more than a millennium to the 2nd century BCE. This was a significant discovery for Old Testament scholars who anticipated that the Dead Sea Scrolls would either affirm or repudiate the reliability of textual transmission from the original texts to the oldest Masoretic texts at hand. The discovery demonstrated the unusual accuracy of transmission over a thousand-year period, rendering it reasonable to believe that current Old Testament texts are reliable copies of the original works. According to ''The Dead Sea Scrolls'' by Hebrew scholar Millar Burrows

Of the 166 ''words'' in Isaiah 53, there are only seventeen ''letters'' in question. Ten of these letters are simply a matter of spelling, which does not affect the sense. Four more letters are minor stylistic changes, such as conjunctions. The remaining three letters comprise the word "light," which is added in verse 11, and does not affect the meaning greatly.

Differences were found among fragments of texts. According to ''The Oxford Companion to Archaeology'': The majority of the texts found is non-biblical in nature and were thought to be insignificant for understanding the composition or canonization of the biblical books, but a consensus has emerged which sees many of these works as being collected by the Essene community instead of being composed by them. Scholars now recognize that some of these works were composed earlier than the Essene period, when some of the biblical books were still being written or redacted into their final form.

Biblical books found

There are 235 biblical texts, including 10 deuterocanonical books, included in the Dead Sea Scroll documents, or around 22% of the total. The Dead Sea Scrolls contain parts of all but one of the books of the Tanakh of the Hebrew Bible and the Old Testament Protocanonical books, protocanon. They also include four of the deuterocanonical books included in Catholic Bible, Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Church, Eastern Orthodox Bibles: Book of Tobit, Tobit, Book of Sirach, Sirach, Book of Baruch, Baruch 6 (also known as the Letter of Jeremiah, Letter or Epistle of Jeremiah), and Psalm 151. The Book of Esther has not yet been found, and scholars believe Esther is missing because, as a Jew, her marriage to a Achaemenid Empire, Persian king may have been looked down upon by the inhabitants of Qumran, or because the book has the Purim festival which is not included in the Hebrew calendar#The Qumran calendar, Qumran calendar. Listed below are the most represented books, along with the deuterocanonicals, of the Bible found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, including the number of translatable Dead Sea texts that represent a copy of scripture from each biblical book:

Museum exhibitions and displays

Small portions of the Dead Sea Scrolls collections have been put on temporary display in exhibitions at museums and public venues around the world. The majority of these exhibitions took place in 1965 in the United States and the United Kingdom and from 1993 to 2011 in locations around the world. Many of the exhibitions were co-sponsored by either the Jordanian government (pre-1967) or the Israeli government (post-1967). Exhibitions were discontinued after 1965 due to the Six-Day War conflicts and have slowed down in post-2011 as the IAA works to digitize the scrolls and place them in permanent cold storage. The majority of the Dead Sea Scrolls collection was moved to Jerusalem's

(a part of the Israel Museum) after the building's completion in April 1965. The museum falls under the auspices of the IAA. The permanent exhibition at the museum features a reproduction of the Great Isaiah Scroll, surrounded by reproductions of other fragments that include Community Rule, the War Scroll, and the Thanksgiving Psalms Scroll. Some of the collection held by the Jordanian government prior to 1967 was stored in Amman rather than at the Rockefeller Archeological Museum, Palestine Archaeological Museum in East Jerusalem. As a consequence, that part of the collection remained in Jordanian hands under their Department of Antiquities. Since 2013, the part of the collection held by Jordan has been on display at The Jordan Museum in Amman. Among the display items are artefacts from the Qumran site and the Copper Scroll.

Ownership

Upon their discovery in 1947 in what was then Mandatory Palestine, the Dead Sea Scrolls were first moved to the Palestine Archaeological Museum. Following the

(including East Jerusalem) in the aftermath of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, the museum's management become the responsibility of Jordan. Following the

, Jordan was defeated and Israel began to Israeli occupation of the West Bank, occupy the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The Palestine Archeological Museum (renamed the Rockefeller Archeological Museum) fell under Israeli administration, and the Dead Sea Scrolls collection held there was moved to the Shrine of the Book. Israel claims ownership of the Dead Sea Scrolls collection currently housed at the Israel Museum. This claimed ownership is contested by both Jordan and the Palestinian Authority.

Forgeries and claimed private ownership

Arrangements with the Bedouins left the scrolls in the hands of a third party until a profitable sale of them could be negotiated. That third party, George Isha'ya, was a member of the Syriac Orthodox Church, who soon contacted Saint Mark Monastery of Jerusalem, St Mark's Monastery in the hope of getting an appraisal of the nature of the texts. News of the find then reached Metropolitan bishop, Metropolitan Athanasius Yeshue Samuel, better known as Mar Samuel. After examining the scrolls and suspecting their antiquity, Mar Samuel expressed an interest in purchasing them. Four scrolls found their way into his hands: the Isaiah Scroll (1QIs-a, 1QIsa^a), the Community Rule, the Habakkuk Pesher (a commentary on the book of Habakkuk), and the Genesis Apocryphon. More scrolls soon surfaced in the antiquities market, and Professor Eleazer Sukenik and Professor Benjamin Mazar, archaeologists at Hebrew University, soon found themselves in possession of three, The War Scroll, Thanksgiving Hymns, and another, more fragmented, Isaiah Scroll (1QIsa^b). Four of the Dead Sea Scrolls eventually went up for sale in an advertisement on 1 June 1954, ''The Wall Street Journal''. On 1 July 1954, the scrolls, after delicate negotiations and accompanied by three people including Mar Samuel, arrived at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York. They were purchased by Professor Mazar and the son of Professor Sukenik, Yigael Yadin, for $250,000 (approximately $ in dollars), and brought to Jerusalem. Since 2002, many forgeries of Dead Sea Scrolls have appeared on black markets. In 2020, the Museum of the Bible in the United States (also known as Green Collection) reported that all 16 purported "Dead Sea Scroll fragments" they had acquired between 2009 and 2014 were in fact modern forgeries.

Copyright disputes

There are three types of documents relating to the Dead Sea Scrolls in which copyright status can be considered ambiguous; the documents themselves, images taken of the documents, and reproductions of the documents. This ambiguity arises from differences in copyright law across different countries and the variable interpretation of such law. In 1992 a copyright case ''Qimron v. Shanks'' was brought before the Israeli District court by scholar Elisha Qimron against Hershel Shanks of the Biblical Archaeology Society for violations of United States copyright law regarding his publishing of reconstructions of Dead Sea Scroll texts done by Qimron in ''A Facsimile Edition of the Dead Sea Scrolls'' which were included without his permission. Qimron's suit against the Biblical Archaeology Society was done on the grounds that the research they had published was his intellectual property as he had reconstructed about 40% of the published text. In 1993, the district court Judge Dalia Dorner ruled for the plaintiff, Elisha Qimron, in context of both United States and Israeli copyright law and granted the highest compensation allowed by law for aggravation in compensation against Hershel Shanks and others. In an appeal in 2000 in front of Judge Aharon Barak, the verdict was upheld in Israeli Supreme Court in Qimron's favour. The court case established the two main principles from which facsimiles are examined under copyright law of the United States and Israel: authorship and originality. The court's ruling not only affirms that the "deciphered text" of the scrolls can fall under copyright of individuals or groups, but makes it clear that the Dead Sea Scrolls themselves do not fall under this copyright law and scholars have a degree of, in the words of U.S. copyright law professor David Nimmer, "freedom" in access. Nimmer has shown how this freedom was in the theory of law applicable, but how it did not exist in reality as the IAA tightly controlled access to the scrolls and photographs of the scrolls.

Notes

References

Bibliography

Books * * * * * * * * Chernoivanenko, Vitaly.
The Jerusalem Theory of the Dead Sea Scrolls Authorship: Origins, Evolution, and Discussions
" in ''Ukrainian Orientalistics: Special Issue on Jewish Studies'', Кyiv: NaUKMA Omeljan Pritsak Center for Oriental Studies, 2011: 9–29. * Collins, John J., ''Apocalypticism in the Dead Sea Scrolls'', New York: Routledge, 1997. * Collins, John J., and Craig A. Evans. ''Christian Beginnings and the Dead Sea Scrolls'', Grand Rapids: Baker, 2006. * Cook, Edward M. (1994). ''Solving the Mysteries of the Dead Sea Scrolls: New Light on the Bible'', Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan. * Frank Moore Cross, Cross, Frank Moore (1995). ''The Ancient Library of Qumran'', 3rd ed., Minneapolis: Fortress Press. * A. Powell Davies, Davies, A. Powell (1956). ''The Meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls.'' Signet. * Philip R. Davies, Davies, Philip R., George J. Brooke, and Phillip R. Callaway (2002). ''The Complete World of the Dead Sea Scrolls'', London: Thames & Hudson. * de Vaux, Roland, ''Archaeology and the Dead Sea Scrolls'' (Schweich Lectures of the British Academy, 1959). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973. * Dimant, Devorah, and Uriel Rappaport (eds.), ''The Dead Sea Scrolls: Forty Years of Research'', Leiden and Jerusalem: E.J. Brill, Magnes Press, Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi, 1992. * Robert Eisenman, Eisenman, Robert H., ''The Dead Sea Scrolls and the First Christians'', Shaftesbury: Element, 1996.
1992
* Eisenman, Robert H. and James Robinson, ''A Facsimile Edition of the Dead Sea Scrolls'' 2 vol., Washington, D.C.: Biblical Archaeology Society, 1991. * Fitzmyer, Joseph A., ''Responses to 101 Questions on the Dead Sea Scrolls'', Paulist Press 1992, * Galor, Katharina, Jean-Baptiste Humbert, and Jürgen Zangenberg. ''Qumran: The Site of the Dead Sea Scrolls: Archaeological Interpretations and Debates: Proceedings of a Conference held at Brown University, 17–19 November 2002'', Edited by Florentino García Martínez, Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah 57. Leiden: Brill, 2006. * García-Martinez, Florentino, ''The Dead Sea Scrolls Translated: The Qumran Texts in English,'' (Translated from Spanish into English by Wilfred G. E. Watson) (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1994). * García Martínez Florentino, Eibert J.C. Tigchelaar, Editors,
The Dead Sea Scrolls Study Edition
', Brill, 1999 * Theodor Gaster, Gaster, Theodor H., ''The Dead Sea Scriptures'', Peter Smith Pub Inc., 1976. * Norman Golb, Golb, Norman, ''Who Wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls? The Search for the Secret of Qumran'', New York: Scribner, 1995. * Golb, Norman,
On the Jerusalem Origin of the Dead Sea Scrolls
'', University of Chicago Oriental Institute, 5 June 2009. * Heline, Theodore, ''Dead Sea Scrolls'', New Age Bible & Philosophy Center, 1957, Reprint edition 1987, * Yizhar Hirschfeld, Hirschfeld, Yizhar, Qumran in Context: Reassessing the Archaeological Evidence, Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 2004. * Israeli, Raphael,
Routledge
Piracy in Qumran: The Battle over the Scrolls of the Pre-Christ Era]'', Transaction Publishers: 2008 * Khabbaz, C., "Les manuscrits de la mer Morte et le secret de leurs auteurs", Beirut, 2006. (Ce livre identifie les auteurs des fameux manuscrits de la mer Morte et dévoile leur secret). * Magen, Yizhak, and Yuval Peleg, ''The Qumran Excavations 1993–2004: Preliminary Report'', JSP 6 (Jerusalem: Israel Antiquities Authority, 2007
Download
* Magen, Yizhak, and Yuval Peleg, "Back to Qumran: Ten years of Excavations and Research, 1993–2004," in The Site of the Dead Sea Scrolls: Archaeological Interpretations and Debates (Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah 57), Brill, 2006 (pp. 55–116). * Magness, Jodi, ''The Archaeology of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls'', Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002. * Maier, Johann, ''The Temple Scroll,'' [German edition was 1978], (Sheffield:JSOT Press [Supplement 34], 1985). * Jozef Milik, Milik, Józef Tadeusz, ''Ten Years of Discovery in the Wilderness of Judea'', London: SCM, 1959. * Muro, E. A., "The Greek Fragments of Enoch from Qumran Cave 7 (7Q4, 7Q8, &7Q12 = 7QEn gr = Enoch 103:3–4, 7–8)." ''Revue de Qumran'' 18, no. 70 (1997): 307, 12, pl. 1. * O'Callaghan-Martínez, Josep, ''Cartas Cristianas Griegas del Siglo V'', Barcelona: E. Balmes, 1963. * Elisha Qimron, Qimron, Elisha, ''The Hebrew of the Dead Sea Scrolls'', Harvard Semitic Studies, 1986. (This is a ''serious'' discussion of the Hebrew language of the scrolls.) * Rengstorf, Karl Heinrich, ''Hirbet Qumran und die Bibliothek vom Toten Meer'', Translated by J.R. Wilkie. Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1960. * Roitman, Adolfo, ed. A Day at Qumran: The Dead Sea Sect and Its Scrolls. Jerusalem: The Israel Museum, 1998. * James A. Sanders, Sanders, James A., ed. ''Dead Sea scrolls: The Psalms scroll of Qumrân Cave 11 (11QPsa)'', (1965) Oxford, Clarendon Press. * Lawrence Schiffman, Schiffman, Lawrence H., ''Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls: their True Meaning for Judaism and Christianity'', Anchor Bible Reference Library (Doubleday) 1995, , (Schiffman has suggested two plausible theories of origin and identity – a Sadducean splinter group, or perhaps an Essene group with Sadducean roots.) Excerpts of this book can be read a
COJS: Dead Sea Scrolls
* Lawrence H. Schiffman, Schiffman, Lawrence H., and James C. VanderKam, eds. ''Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls''. 2 vols. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. * Shanks, Hershel, ''The Mystery and Meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls'', Vintage Press 1999, (recommended introduction to their discovery and history of their scholarship) * Stegemann, Hartmut. "The Qumran Essenes: Local Members of the Main Jewish Union in Late Second Temple Times." pp. 83–166 in ''The Madrid Qumran Congress: Proceedings of the International Congress on the Dead Sea Scrolls, Madrid, 18–21 March 1991'', Edited by J. Trebolle Barrera and L. Vegas Mountainer. Vol. 11 of Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah. Leiden: Brill, 1992. * * Barbara Thiering, Thiering, Barbara, ''Jesus the Man'', New York: Atria, 2006. * Thiering, Barbara, ''Jesus and the Riddle of the Dead Sea Scrolls'' (), New York: HarperCollins, 1992 * Other sources * ''Dead Sea Scrolls Study'' Vol 1: 1Q1 – 4Q273, Vol. 2: 4Q274 – 11Q31, (compact disc), Logos Research Systems, Inc., (contains the non-biblical portion of the scrolls with Hebrew and Aramaic transcriptions in parallel with English translations)
Comprehensive Cross Reference interactive module for Dead Sea Scrolls, Josephus, Philo, Nag Hammadi Library, Pseudepigrapha, Old Testament Apocrypha, New Testament Apocrypha, Plato, Pythagoras, Dhammapada, Egyptian Book of the Dead, Tacitus, Talmud, New and Old Testaments, Apostolic and Early Church Fathers

External links

Bible Places: Qumran Caves

Israel Museum, Jerusalem: Shrine of the Book – Dead Sea Scrolls

My Jewish Learning: Dead Sea Scrolls
{{DEFAULTSORT:Dead Sea Scrolls Dead Sea Scrolls, 1946 archaeological discoveries 1st-century BC biblical manuscripts 1st-century biblical manuscripts 2nd-century BC biblical manuscripts 3rd-century BC biblical manuscripts Ancient Hebrew texts Ancient Jewish history Archaeological corpora Archaeological discoveries in the West Bank Archaeology of Palestine (region) Collection of the Israel Museum Essene texts Hebrew manuscripts History of the West Bank Israel Antiquities Authority Judaean Desert Judea

Discovery

Initial discovery (1946–1947)

Search for the Qumran caves (1948–1949)

Qumran caves rediscovery and new scroll discoveries (1949–1951)

Excavations of Qumran and new cave discoveries (1951–1956, 2017, 2021)

Caves and their contents

Gallery

Origin

Qumran–Essene theory

Qumran–Sectarian theory

Christian origin theory

Jerusalem origin theory

Physical characteristics

Radiocarbon dating

Paleographic dating

Ink and parchment

Preservation

Photography and assembly

First photographs (1948)

Infrared photography and plate assembly (1952–1967)

Digital infrared imaging (1993–2012)

DNA scroll assembly (2006–2020)

Digitization project (2011–2016)

Scholarly examination

Publication

Physical publication

''Discoveries in the Judaean Desert'' (1955–2009)

''A Preliminary Edition of the Unpublished Dead Sea Scrolls'' (1991)

''A Facsimile Edition of the Dead Sea Scrolls'' (1991)

The Facsimile Edition (2007–2008)

Digital publication

Biblical significance

Biblical books found

Museum exhibitions and displays

Ownership

Forgeries and claimed private ownership

Copyright disputes

See also

Notes

References

Bibliography

Further reading

External links