Why Are the Dead Sea Scrolls Important?

What Are the Dead Sea Scrolls?

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The Dead Sea Scrolls are a series of religious texts that were discovered in caves around the Dead Sea. The scrolls were hidden around the time of Christ, though scholars disagree on the exact date. Most people hold that the scrolls were hidden in a series of caves when the Jewish settlement at Qumran was destroyed by the Romans in A.D. 68. The scrolls would remain secreted away in these caves until a teenage Bedouin shepherd stumbled across them in 1947. The boy tossed a rock into one of the caves and was startled to hear the sound of shattering pottery. When he investigated, he found a number of clay jars. Many were empty, but a number were sealed. The teen opened one of the pots and discovered a number of leather and papyrus scrolls. These were the first of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Eventually, word of this accidental discovery spread throughout the antiquities and scholarly communities, and the desolate landscape on the banks of the Dead Sea became of great importance. More than 900 manuscripts have been recovered from the caves around the Dead Sea since the original discovery of the first seven scrolls.

Historical Context

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Truly understanding the past is difficult. All that modern scholars have to base their opinions on are the fragments of pottery that lie hidden in the ground and the few stories that somehow survive the passage of time. As such, historians and scholars are ecstatic when new information is discovered that can help them form a better picture of the past. The Dead Sea Scrolls, with their more than 10,000 scroll fragments, were the archaeological equivalent of winning the lottery about six times in a row. The Dead Sea Scrolls contain information about events that happened 2,000 years ago from a previously unknown source. The scrolls are theorized to have been hidden from Roman soldiers. As such, texts that Rome wanted destroyed survived, and with it, historical information about Judea and Israel near the turn of the millennia.

Biblical References

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Israel is known as the Holy Land and was the location where events crucial to all three Abrahamic religions took place. As such, it is all but impossible to make a discovery in Israel and not have the discovery have some sort of religious importance. The Dead Sea Scrolls are no different. The Dead Sea Scrolls contain the oldest known version of Isaiah, which is nearly 1,000 years older than any other known copy of this book. In fact, the scrolls are the oldest group of Old Testament manuscripts ever found. Every book of the Old Testament is represented in the Dead Sea Scrolls except the Book of Esther.

The Dead Sea Scroll copies of the Old Testament actually expand on the modern, canonical Bible. The Dead Sea Scrolls contain prophecies by Ezekiel, Jeremiah and Daniel that are not found in the Bible as well as otherwise unknown psalms attributed to David and Joshua. The cache of scrolls also contains ancient commentaries on the Old Testament, works that expand on the Law, ancient liturgical texts and wisdom writings. In addition, the final words of such important Biblical figures as Joseph, Judah, Levi, Naphtali and Amram are recorded in the scrolls as are expanded versions of famous Bible stories. For example, the reason God told Abraham to sacrifice Isaac is written in one of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Such information has revolutionized textual criticism and scholarly understanding of the Old Testament.

Linguistic Assistance

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While not as exciting as Biblical “missing scenes,” the Dead Sea Scrolls were actually very important for linguistic scholars. Language changes over time, something that is abundantly clear to any student who has ever read Shakespeare much less tried to understand the gobbledygook that is the original Old English Beowulf. Biblical languages, of course, are even older and so have undergone even more changes over time. As such, scholars sometimes struggle to understand ancient Hebrew, Greek or Aramaic, the three most important languages for studying Biblical history. The Dead Sea Scrolls contributed greatly to scholars seeking to understand Aramaic, the language that Jesus would have spoken and that was used by Palestinian Jews from roughly 200 B.C. to A.D. 200. Numerous other important Biblical and historical writings were recorded in Aramaic, and the Dead Sea Scrolls lead scholars to improve their understanding of these other writings as well.

Cultural Information

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Around the time of Christ, there were three main Jewish sects: the Pharisees, the Sadducees and the Essenes. Of the Essenes, little was known besides what was contained in the writings of the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus. The Essenes were a secretive group and do not appear in the Bible, which makes information on them a rarity. The Dead Sea Scrolls, however, changed all of that.

Though the authorship of the Dead Sea Scrolls is a matter of debate, the prevailing theory is that the Dead Sea Scrolls were written by the Essenes between 200 B.C. and A.D. 68. The Essenes were a strict Torah observant, Messianic, ascetic and apocalyptic Jewish sect. Qumran is believed to have been one of their “monasteries” before it was destroyed by the Romans in A.D. 68. The Dead Sea Scrolls contain a number of writings that describe daily life among the Essenes including a rule book for the isolated community.

Where Are They Now?

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The Dead Sea Scrolls are currently stored in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. Several of the scrolls are displayed in the Shrine of the Book, but most are kept in a small temperature and humidity controlled vault. While any scholar who has a legitimate reason to view the original scrolls may do so, most of the manuscripts are seen as too fragile for general display. That said, images of many of the scrolls are available online, and a number of the scrolls have been translated into modern languages. Some of these translations have been compiled into books for sale while others have simply been posted online. The translation process, however, still continues. Meanwhile, more than 150 previously unknown fragments have been sold since 1998, and some archaeologists are still searching the caves around the Dead Sea in the hopes of finding another cache of scrolls. As such, the Dead Sea Scrolls continue to hold the attention of scholars and may yet continue to surprise and delight the entire world.