The Dead Sea Scrolls: What was found?

The Dead Sea Scrolls were found in the years 1947 to 1956 in eleven caves near Qumran on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea — the lowest place, and one of the driest places, on earth.

The Judean wilderness around the Dead Sea is riddled with caves and hiding places.

The remains of about 800 scrolls were discovered. Some were substantially intact, including copies of the book of Isaiah. However, most survived only as fragments and assembly was painstaking and difficult – rather like working on vast jigsaw puzzles with many of the pieces missing.

The Scrolls were from the library of the monastic Essenes – a Jewish sect in Israel. During the First Jewish Revolt from 66AD to 73AD, the Essenes hid their valuables and fled from the Roman army. The treasure was preserved for 1900 years.

Cave number 4 at Qumran

The settlement of the Essenes was located above the gorge running from the mountains to the Dead Sea.

About 190 of the 800 scrolls were from every book of the Hebrew Bible, except the book of Esther. The most popular biblical books were Isaiah, Psalms, Deuteronomy and Genesis. The non-biblical manuscripts included hymns, commentaries, rules for communal life, military manuals and theological works.

At the time of the discovery of the Scrolls the area was controlled by Jordan. Seven scholars were assigned to assemble the fragments. Six were Catholic clerics. The seventh was an agnostic. Protestants and Jews were excluded.

It took until the late 1950’s to substantially complete the work of assembly. Then the team divided the 500 different texts among themselves for publication – an act of enormous scholarly pride and greed, because this was far more work than anyone could possibly have completed in a lifetime. Only one scholar ever published his entire assignment, but the work was so bad that an article correcting it is longer than his original publication. Over the next thirty years the team managed to publish less than twenty per cent of the texts.

Scholars in the 1950’s
studying fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls

There was great dissatisfaction from excluded scholars around the world, and the delays fuelled controversies and speculation that ran in the popular press in the 1990’s.

Israel had acquired a handful of scrolls by purchase in 1947, and others in 1954. They gained administration of the entire project when they defeated Jordan in the 1967 Six-Day War. However, Israel was unwilling to risk international criticism, so the scholars continued to guard their “right” to the hoard of texts. It was not until 1991, when various pressures, and the publication of computer reconstructed photographic transcripts of the Scrolls, made the entire collection generally available.

Today, anyone can purchase a copy of all the Scrolls and more than 50 international scholars – Catholic, Protestant, Jewish and secular – have been working on the project.

The mystery has gone out of the affair – and with it, public interest.

However, for the Bible-believer, we can say that the study of the Dead Sea Scrolls will give:

• The knowledge that Christianity is grounded more deeply in Jewish thought than was supposed for many centuries.
• Confirmation that the Hebrew Bible, used by Jews and Christians today, is the same as that quoted by Jesus.