Dead Sea Scrolls

A set of ancient documents that were discovered between 1947 CE and 1956 CE in eleven caves near the Dead Sea in Israel. Twelve of them are written on leather, one is embossed on copper and the rest are on fragments of papyrus and leather. The 800 manuscripts are mostly fragments rather than whole texts, although the copy of the book of Isaiah is almost complete. The scrolls are a collection of Bible books, rule books, biblical commentaries, poetry and liturgical texts.

They were most likely produced by a Jewish sect that existed during the time of Jesus, known by some as the Essenes. Their headquarters were at Qumran near the Dead Sea. Carbon 14 dating tests reveal that they were written roughly between 200 BCE-70 CE. Apocryphal/deuterocanonical/anagignoskomena books from the Old Testament were also found among the scrolls. The biblical texts have been very useful in terms of helping scholars translate the Old Testament more accurately and in gaining insights into how the Bible developed. The non-biblical documents found in the caves are highly cryptic, using language that was meaningful mostly to insiders of the sect.

There have been many sensationalist books written about the link between the Essene community and Jesus/the early Christian movement. Conspiracy theories developed that the scrolls contained information that the Church wanted to suppress. This was largely because the Catholic archaeologist leading the editorial work on the scrolls, Fr. Roland De Vaux, delayed placing the texts into the public domain. In reality, most scholars recognise that the delay was due to a combination of disorganisation, not appreciating the scale of the task and a degree of academic pride. The scrolls were eventually made public in 1990. In summary, the scrolls are a huge help in understanding the nature of Jewish society of the time and in establishing more exactly the text of the Old Testament, but are not generally understood to be threatening to Christianity.