DEAD SEA SCROLLS

DEAD SEA SCROLLS

The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls was a providential accident. It happened in 1947 when three Bedouin shepherds were grazing their goats near Qumran on the north-west shore of the Dead Sea. While searching for a goat, one of them noticed two openings on the face of the cliff. He threw a rock into one of them and heard the sound of breaking pottery. He was excited at having found what he thought were some treasure jars.

Two days later, his younger cousin woke up early and entered the cave. He found pieces of broken pottery and a lot of jars along the wall, some with their lids on. Inside the jars was something wrapped in cloth and two bundles of leather. He was deeply disappointed at the lack of treasure. Little did he know that he had found a great treasure– the oldest complete copy of the book of Isaiah, an ancient commentary on the book of Habakkuk, and an account of the rules governing the religious community from which these scrolls came.

The shepherds crammed these and other rolls of leather from the cave into their bags and hung them on a tent pole until they could find some antique dealer who might be interested in old scrolls.

When archaeologists eventually learnt of the existence of what came to be known as the Dead Sea scrolls, they set out to explore the caves. Between 1947 and 1956 eleven caves were found to have manuscript material. In all, fragments or large sections of over 850 manuscripts dating from between 250 BC and AD 70 were discovered. Most of the books of the Hebrew Bible are represented, except for the book of Esther. Biblical scholars were very excited because before the discovery of these scrolls, the earliest Hebrew manuscripts for the OT dated from around AD 1000. The scrolls were more than a thousand years older than that! They showed that the OT manuscripts had been well preserved and accurately transmitted over the centuries.

A few of the scrolls were published as early as 1950-1951, but until 1991 many others were accessible only to the original team of archeologists and those who worked closely with them. This led some to develop conspiracy theories and claim that scholars were hiding something that would shake the core of our faith. However, today the Discoveries in the Judaean Desert series put out by Oxford University Press has published more than forty volumes of scholarly editions of these texts. There is no evidence of any conspiracy to hide their contents.

Most of the scrolls were written in Hebrew, although a few are in Aramaic and Greek. They fall into four broad categories:

• Biblical books: All the Old Testament books are represented (except Esther). Some like Psalms, Deuteronomy and Isaiah exist in multiple copies. There are also some fragments from books like Tobit and Ben Sira that belong to the Apocrypha.

• Jewish religious texts that are not part of the Hebrew Bible. These include books like 1 Enoch and the book of Jubilees.

• Documents setting out the ideology and practices of the Jewish community that preserved the scrolls, whom many scholars identify as the Essenes. The documents include manuscripts like the Rule of the Community, Thanksgiving Hymns and the War Scroll.

• A group of miscellaneous texts. To this category belong scrolls like the Copper Scroll which is a list of hidden treasures, or the Prayer of Nabonidus, the Targum to Job and the Genesis apocryphon.

The study of the Dead Sea Scrolls is exceedingly important because they help us to understand Jewish thinking in the intertestamental period – that is, the years between the end of the OT (the Hebrew Bible) and the start of the NT. This knowledge helps us to interpret the Bible better and gives us a better understanding of the Jewish context in which Jesus ministered. Many themes that have been found in the NT can be traced back to the Dead Sea Scrolls and to the OT.

There are also some theological similarities between the Qumran community and aspects of the Jesus movement.