The History and Significance of the Dead Sea Scrolls
The Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS), also called the Qumran Caves Scrolls, are a set of ancient Jewish manuscripts from the Second Temple period. 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. These date back to the third century BCE and are significant because they shed considerable light on the religious and political world of late Second Temple Judaism and on the text of the Hebrew Bible.
The Story of Discovery
The scrolls 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. In late 1947 a young Bedouin boy tossed a stone into a cave, heard the clink of breaking pottery, and would later scramble in to find the tattered remains of ancient scrolls. There are 981 different manuscripts from 11 caves in Qumran in the eastern Judaean Desert. Archaeologists have long associated the scrolls with the ancient Jewish sect known as the Essenes, who lived in the nearby ruins of Khirbet Qumran, although some recent interpretations argue that priests in Jerusalem or other unknown Jewish groups wrote the scrolls.
Composition and Languages
Most of the scrolls are in Hebrew, with some written in Aramaic and Greek. The texts are written on parchment, some on papyrus, and one on copper. Despite the name, the majority of the scrolls are preserved as fragments, small scraps of what were once larger scrolls and documents. To date, more than 25,000 fragments have been discovered, and extensive work has gone into combining, preserving, translating, and studying these various fragments.
Classification of the Manuscripts
The term “biblical” is inappropriate when applied to the DSS because “the Bible” as we know it today did not exist in Second Temple Judaism (515 BCE-70 CE). Rather than denoting a set of texts with a special level of authority, “biblical scrolls” refers to those texts found in the Tanakh/Hebrew Bible. Among the DSS, every book of the Hebrew Bible has been found except for Esther. However, not all books are equally attested. The following data highlights the most prevalent biblical scrolls found in the collection:
| Biblical Book | Number of Scrolls Found |
|---|---|
| Psalms | 34 |
| Deuteronomy | 30 |
| Isaiah | 21 |
| Genesis | 20 |
| Ecclesiastes | 2 |
| Ezra, Nehemiah, and Chronicles | 1 each |
Interpretative and Non-Biblical Texts
Other scrolls include special classifications such as Targumim and Pesherim. Targumim are special Aramaic translations and interpretations (targum in Hebrew for “translation”). Pesherim are special running commentaries on various prophetic texts and the Psalms of the Hebrew Bible, written in Hebrew and aimed specifically at the Qumran community. This group of texts also includes Apocryphal and Pseudepigraphical Scrolls, which designates works that were not biblical in the sense of becoming part of the Hebrew Bible nor are unique to the Qumran community, such as 1 Enoch and Jubilees.
The Shrine of the Book
Today the Shrine of the Book Museum in Jerusalem is where the Dead Sea Scrolls and fragments are located. The Shrine of the Book was built as a repository for the first seven scrolls discovered at Qumran in 1947. The unique white dome embodies the lids of the jars in which the first scrolls were found. The contrast between the white dome and the black wall alongside it alludes to the tension evident in the scrolls between the spiritual world of the “Sons of Light” and the “Sons of Darkness.” This symbolic building is considered an international landmark of modern architecture and the corridor leading into the Shrine resembles a cave, recalling the site where the ancient manuscripts were discovered.