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The content of many scrolls has not yet been fully published. Some resources for more complete information on the scrolls are the book by Emanuel Tov, "Revised Lists of the Texts from the Judaean Desert" [1] for a complete list of all of the Dead Sea Scroll texts, as well as the online webpages for the Shrine of the Book [2] and the Leon Levy Collection, [3] both of which present photographs ...
There are 235 biblical texts, including 10 deuterocanonical books, included in the Dead Sea Scroll documents, or around 22% of the total. [130] [14] The Dead Sea Scrolls contain parts of all but one of the books of the Tanakh of the Hebrew Bible and the Old Testament protocanon.
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Dead Sea Scrolls, ancient, mostly Hebrew, manuscripts (of leather, papyrus, and copper) first found in 1947 on the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea. Discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls is among the more important finds in the history of modern archaeology. Study of the scrolls has enabled scholars to push back the date of a stabilized Hebrew Bible ...
The Dead Sea Scrolls come from various sites and date from the 3rd century bce to the 2nd century ce. The term usually refers more specifically to manuscripts found in 11 caves near the ruins of Qumrān, which most scholars think was the home of the community that owned the scrolls. The relevant period of occupation of this site runs from c. 100 to c. 68 bce, and the scrolls themselves nearly all date from the 3rd to the 1st century bce. The 15,000 fragments (most of which are tiny) represent the remains of 800 to 900 original manuscripts. They are conventionally labeled by cave number and the first letter (or letters) of the Hebrew title—e.g., 1QM = Cave 1, Qumrān, Milḥamah (the Hebrew word for “war”); or 4QTest = Cave 4, Qumrān, Testimonia (i.e., a collection of proof-texts). Each manuscript has also been given an individual number.
The documents were recovered in the Judaean wilderness from five principal sites: Khirbat Qumrān, Wadi Al-Murabbaʿāt, Naḥal Ḥever (Wadi Khabrah) and Naḥal Ẓeʾelim (Wadi Seiyal), Wadi Daliyeh, and Masada. The first manuscripts, accidentally discovered in 1947 by a shepherd boy in a cave at Khirbat Qumrān on the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea, were almost immediately labeled Dead Sea Scrolls. Later (especially from the 1950s to the mid-1960s) finds in neighbouring areas were similarly designated.
A great number and variety of manuscripts were discovered at Qumrān. The best-preserved documents at that site are those found in Cave 1, including an Isaiah Scroll; the Rule of the Community (also called the Manual of Discipline); The War of the Sons of Light Against the Sons of Darkness, or War Scroll; a scroll of thanksgiving hymns; and a commentary on Habakkuk. Cave 2 contained only fragments, but Cave 3 yielded the Copper Scroll, a list of Temple treasures and their hiding places. Cave 4 sheltered the main deposit of what some believe to have been an Essene library, which contained approximately 400 manuscripts, generally in poor condition. Most of the manuscripts are sectarian writings, and about 100 of them are biblical texts, covering the entire Hebrew Bible except Esther. Several well-preserved documents were recovered from Cave 11, including a large scroll with canonical, apocryphal, and unknown psalms. There was also a copy of Leviticus (dated to the 3rd century bce) as well as the very important Temple Scroll. Its 66 preserved columns give details for the construction of the ideal Temple of Jerusalem.
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Wadi Al-Murabbaʿāt, a second site 11 miles (18 km) south of Qumrān, contained documents left by fugitives from the armies of Bar Kokhba, the leader of the Second Jewish Revolt against Rome in 132–135 ce. Archaeologists recovered two letters of Bar Kokhba, legal documents in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, and fragmentary biblical works of the 1st and 2nd centuries ce. They also found a remarkably well-preserved scroll of the 12 Minor Prophets that is virtually identical with the traditional biblical text.
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Apr 16, 2023 · The Dead Sea Scrolls are considered by many to be the most significant archaeological find of the 20th century. From 1947 to 1956, thousands of scroll fragments were uncovered from the caves near Qumran, located on the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea. Over the following decades, teams of scholars pieced these scrolls together to reconstruct ...
May 22, 2012 · The Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS) are a collection of scrolls found in the desert east of Jerusalem on the shore of the Dead Sea. They represent the largest manuscript collections of texts from the Second Temple Period found in the area of Judah, an area notorious for its lack of manuscripts. Around 930 texts were found in 11 caves in the hills ...
Feb 20, 2020 · In total, the ‘Dead Sea Scrolls’, as they began to be called, are a collection of approximately 1,000 manuscripts, preserved in over 25,000 fragments. The texts include unique sectarian writings, as well as every book of the Hebrew Bible except Esther.
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Many more compositions deserve mention, but this brief survey demonstrates the major role played by the Dead Sea Scrolls in improving our comprehension of this pivotal moment in Jewish history. A New Discovery. In March 2021, for the first time in nearly 60 years, fragments from a Dead Sea scroll were found in a cave in the Judean Desert.
