The Dead Sea Scrolls are ancient religious writings containing some Old Testament documents, commentaries, and non-Biblical material.
The Scrolls were accidentally discovered by a Bedouin shepherd in 1947 west of the Dead Sea at what was then Jordan. From 1947 to 1951 additional Scrolls were discovered. The bulk of the Scrolls were in 11 caves near Qumran. Written mostly on parchment, they present us with Hebrew biblical texts 1000 years older than previously discovered, and in at least three different types of script.¹
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| Dennis Jarvis - Israel-06006 - Most Famous Cave - Flickr |
Most scholars believe they were written by the Essenes, a Jewish religious community at Qumran overrun by the Romans in 68 CE. Randall Price notes that the discovery was synchronous with the formation of Israel as an independent nation (Jungians might say synchronistic).²
The discovery of the Scrolls reveals, among other things, how some scholars act more on self-interest than a supposed concern for the dissemination and development of knowledge. After their discovery, the Scrolls were zealously hoarded by a select group of scholars. Other scholars were literally barred from seeing them. Although the material on which they were written was often fragmented and required painstaking reconstruction, many of the excluded scholars say the inner circle of researchers retained the Scrolls for a far longer period than reasonable.
Moreover, misleading press releases were issued, saying the content of the Scrolls would entirely change the way the world envisions the Bible and Christianity. Most likely these claims partly arose from naive enthusiasm but also, it seems, unashamed sensationalism.While no one seems to know when the Scrolls were written, Randall Price says they "yield dates from 225 BCE to CE 68."² However, Robert Eisenman and Michael Wise maintain that the procedure known as AMS Carbon 14 dating (often cited as alleged proof of an artifact's date) "is still in its infancy, subject to multiple variables, and too uncertain to be applied with precision to the kind of materials we have before us [the Scrolls]."³
Some of the Scrolls were discovered beyond the caves at Qumran. The editor-in-chief of the Scrolls Translation and Publication Team says
It is misleading to say that all of the Scrolls were written by the Qumran group, i.e. the Essenses. We now believe that many, maybe most, of the Scrolls found at Qumran were actually not written by people who dwelt at Qumran. Some scholars even believe that all of the Scrolls were written outside of Qumran without any connection to the Qumran community.4
Nevertheless, some writers like Barbara Thiering affix a specific date and location to the writing of the Scrolls, apparently to support their own ideas.
¹ S. G. F. Brandon Ed., A Dictionary of Comparative Religion, 1971, p. 522. Some of the texts were written on papyrus, and one on copper.
² Randall Price, Secrets of the Dead Sea Scrolls, Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers, 1996, p. 81.
³ Robert Eisenman and Michael Wise, The Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered, RockPort MA: Element Inc, 1992, p. 13.
4 Emmanuel Tov, cited in Price, p. 83.
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| The Dead Sea Scrolls on display in the Shrine of the Book at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. - Flickr |
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