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Dead Sea Scrolls: Caves
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The Dead Sea Scrolls are a collection of ancient manuscripts totaling about 700 scrolls and fragments of documents. The Scrolls, which predate Christ, were written on materials such as parchment, papyrus, leather and thin sheets of copper. They were discovered in 1947 in several of the numerous caves in the northwestern Dead Sea desert region by a young Bedouin shepherd who later sold them to museum curators and antiquities dealers. Some of the most important of the Scrolls are now housed in the Shrine of the Book in Jerusalem. To protect them from further deterioration, they are encased in silk screen sheaths. The temperature, humidity and light is carefully monitored within the Scrollery in order to preserve the ancient manuscripts.
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The Dead Sea Scrolls are ancient manuscripts found at Khirbat Qumran, in caves in the Judean desert near the Dead Sea, 7.5 miles (12 km) from Jericho. The scrolls were uncovered in 1947. Archaeologists later discovered a cemetery of over one thousand graves, a central building, and central caves containing fragments of old documents. The area was apparently destroyed by an earthquake in 31 B.C.E. and then rebuilt. The authors of the scrolls lived there until 68 C.E.
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The story of the Dead Sea Scrolls begins in 1947, when – so the tale goes – a Bedouin shepherd found a collection of apparently ancient scrolls in a cave above Khirbet Qumran, near the north end of the Dead Sea. Over the course of the next year, seven scrolls from the cave reached scholarly hands. When examined by experts, the importance and antiquity of the find was quickly understood. For starters, included among these first seven scrolls was a fairly well-preserved copy of the biblical book of Isaiah, soon determined to be the oldest complete manuscript of a Hebrew scripture yet discovered and dating to before 100 BCE.
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The Dead Sea Scrolls are sometimes known as the Library of Qumran or the Qumran Scrolls, because other scroll deposits have been found in the Dead Sea region, such as the Bar Kokhba documents from Wadi Muraba'at. Qumran is the name of the archaeological site located nearest the caves, and in fact is 500 meters from Cave 4, where over 500 documents were discovered. An ongoing scholarly debate concerns Qumran, as to its association with the scrolls and whether its ruins represent a sectarian settlement where the authors of the scrolls resided, or alternatively a Roman villa, a fortress, and even a pottery factory.
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The Dead Sea Scrolls have been called the greatest manuscript discovery of modern times. They were discovered between 1947 and 1956 in eleven caves along the northwest shore of the Dead Sea. This is an arid region 13 miles east of Jerusalem and 1,300 feet below sea level. The Dead Sea Scrolls are comprised of the remains of approximately 825 to 870 separate scrolls, represented by tens of thousands of fragments. The texts are most commonly made of animal skins, but ... papyrus and one of copper. They are written with a carbon-based ink, from right to left, using no punctuation except for an occasional paragraph indentation.
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The Dead Sea Scrolls were found in caves 20 miles east of Jerusalem in 1947 and 1956. Now Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, co-authors of "The Holy Blood & The Holy Grail", have succeeded in uncovering what has been described as 'the academic scandal par excellence of the twentieth century': the story of how and why up to 75 per cent of the eight hundred ancient Hebrew and Aramaic manuscripts, hidden for some nineteen centuries, have, until very recently, remained concealed from the rest of the world. Through interviews, historical analysis and a close study of both published and unpublished scroll material, the authors are able to reveal the true cause of the bitter struggle between scholars, for these documents disclose nothing less than a new account of the origins of Christianity and an alternative and highly significant version of the New Testament.
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