The Dead Sea Scrolls: History& Overview. Dead Sea Scrolls Foundation Website. The Dead Sea Scrolls at the Gnostic Society Library: Online Texts from the Scrolls. Introduction to the Texts Working from many thousands of scroll fragments recovered in eleven caves near Qumran, researches have identified approximately 800 different original manuscripts. A few scrolls were fairly intact when found, others have been tentatively pieced together, still more exist only as small scraps of parchment. The preserved portions of a scroll often give only glimpses of what might have existed in the complete text.
(See the Introduction to the collection for more background information.) DSS texts are identified by a number and letter combination, indicating the cave from which they were recovered: "1Q" indicates the text was found in Qumran cave 1; "4Q" means found in Qumran cave 4. This initial code is followed by either a second number (the catalog file number assigned to each fragment as it was archived) or by a few letters that abbreviate an alternative name given to a fragment by researchers, usually the supposed title of the text. Dead Sea Scrolls. Ancient Jewish manuscripts The Dead Sea Scrolls, also called the Qumran Caves Scrolls, are a set of ancient Jewish manuscripts from the Second Temple period.
They were discovered over a period of 10 years, between 1946 and 1956, at the Qumran Caves near Ein Feshkha in the West Bank, on the northern shore of the Dead Sea. Dating from the 3rd century BCE to the 1st century CE,[1] the Dead Sea Scrolls are considered to be a keystone in the history of archaeology with great historical, religious, and linguistic significance because they include the oldest surviving manuscripts of entire books later included in the biblical canons, along with extra-biblical and deuterocanonical manuscripts that preserve evidence of the diversity of religious thought in late Second Temple Judaism.
Many thousands of written fragments have been discovered in the Dead Sea area. Owing to the poor condition of some of the scrolls, scholars have not identified all of their texts. Discovery Cave 1 Cave 2 Cave 3 Cave 5. Scrolls from the Dead Sea (Library of Congress Exhibition) The Great Isaiah Scroll. The Great Isaiah Scroll The Great Isaiah Scroll (1QIsaa) • Qumran Cave 1 • 1st century BCE • Parchment • H: 22-25, L: 734 cm • Government of Israel • Accession number: HU 95.57/27 The Great Isaiah Scroll (1QIsaa) is one of the original seven Dead Sea Scrolls discovered in Qumran in 1947. It is the largest (734 cm) and best preserved of all the biblical scrolls, and the only one that is almost complete. The 54 columns contain all 66 chapters of the Hebrew version of the biblical Book of Isaiah.
Dating from ca. 125 BCE, it is also one of the oldest of the Dead Sea Scrolls, some one thousand years older than the oldest manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible known to us before the scrolls' discovery. The version of the text is generally in agreement with the Masoretic or traditional version codified in medieval codices, such as the Aleppo Codex, but it contains many variant readings, alternative spellings, scribal errors, and corrections. Versions and Translations of the Book of Isaiah. The Temple Scroll. The Temple Scroll (11Q19) • Qumran Cave 11 • Late 1st century BCE - early 1st century CE • Parchment • H: 24-26; L: 814 cm • Purchased for the Shrine of the Book with the aid of a grant from the Wolfson Foundation • Accession number: H95.57.25, H95.57.23, H95.82.120 The Temple Scrolla (11Q19) was almost certainly discovered in 1956 in Cave 11, located about two kilometers north of Khirbet Qumran.
The manuscript is written in Hebrew in the square Herodian script of the late Second Temple Period (the first half of the first century CE), on extremely thin animal skin (one-tenth of a millimeter), making it the thinnest parchment scroll ever found in the caves of Qumran. Two other copies of the same composition have also come to light: one in Cave 11 (Temple Scrollb [11Q20]), and another (possibly a fragmentary copy of the last part of the work) in Cave 4 (4QTemple Scrollb [4Q524]). The Temple Scrolla consists of 18 sheets of parchment, each of which has three or four columns of text. The War Scroll. The War Scroll (1QM), popularly known as "The War of the Sons of Light Against the Sons of Darkness," is one of the seven original Dead Sea Scrolls discovered in Qumran in 1947. It contains 19 columns (originally there were at least twenty), of which the first 14–19 lines (out of at least 21–22) are preserved. The work is written in Hebrew in a square Herodian script and is dated to the late first century BCE or early first century CE.
Seven additional fragments (4Q491-497) with similar contents have also been found, but the relationship between these texts to 1QM is not entirely clear; they may represent an earlier version of the War Scroll, or source materials on which the War Scroll was based. This work is not, strictly speaking, an apocalypse (namely, a heavenly revelation), and it lacks a "messianic" figure. Commentary on Habakkuk. The Commentary on Habakkuk Scroll (1QpHab) • Qumran, Cave 1 • 1st century BCE • Parchment • H: 14; L: 148 cm • Government of Israel • Accession number: 95.57/28 The Commentary on Habakkuk (Pesher Habakkuk, 1QpHab), is a relative complete scroll (1.48 m long) and one of the seven original Dead Sea Scrolls discovered in caves of Qumran in 1947. It interprets the first two chapters of the biblical book of the prophet Habakkuk and comprises 13 columns written in Hebrew, in a clear, square Herodian script.
However, the tetragrammaton, the four-letter, ineffable name of God, is written in ancient Hebrew characters, unlike the rest of the text. The scroll has been dated to the second half of the first century BCE. In this work, the verses of the biblical book are copied paragraph by paragraph, in their original order. Two major subjects are treated in this composition.
Dead Sea Scrolls and undying controversy. (Israeli Antiquities Authority…) In June 1954, a small advertisement ran in the Wall Street Journal: "Biblical manuscripts dating back to at least 200 BC are for sale. " The commercial offering was the start of a long and controversial path for the Dead Sea Scrolls, a cache of fragmentary writings in Hebrew and Aramaic (with a few in Greek) that were found in caves near the Dead Sea between 1947 and 1956. The ancient documents include early copies of almost every book of the Hebrew Bible and have been called, justifiably, the greatest archaeological discovery of the 20th century. But that is one of the few things scholars have agreed on. The first controversy followed fast on the scrolls' discovery in the late 1940s, in what is now known as the West Bank. The manuscripts offered in the Wall Street Journal had been brought to the United States by a Syrian archbishop, who didn't want the scrolls to end up in Israeli hands.
Educational Site: Dead Sea Scrolls. The Dead Sea Scrolls - Digital Library. The Digital Dead Sea Scrolls. Dead sea scrolls.