Behind | Dead Sea Scrolls, Part 1

One of the most important archeological finds in history was the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls (abbreviated DSS). These were found in a desert location in modern day Israel at a place called Qumran. They belonged to an ancient Jewish community with a focus on the apocalypse and extreme faithfulness to tenets of Old Testament law. Shepherds first discovered them in the 1940’s. The scrolls discovered there have had enormous influence on the way we study the Bible. 

These texts have been dated to as early as the centuries before the birth of Jesus and more than a third of them are from the Old Testament. They are by far the earliest biblical record for many books of the Old Testament. Before they were found, the earliest known manuscripts of the Old Testament were dated to approximately the 10^th century.

Other texts include deuterocanonical books and manuscripts that were specific to the Qumran community who lived in this place. No New Testament texts have been found at the site. At this point eleven different caves at Qumran have had ancient texts recovered from them. The image above shows a Dead Sea Scroll text called the “Psalm Scroll.”