Dead Sea Scrolls

The Dead Sea Scrolls — also called the Qumran scrolls — were found around 1947 in the caves of Qumran, in Israel. They are book scrolls and fragments of book scrolls, written in the last centuries before the beginning of our era. There are thousands of fragments of roughly a thousand different book scrolls. Only around ten scrolls have been preserved (almost) complete.

Roughly 20 percent of the 1 000 book scrolls are “biblical” texts, books of the Old Testament. Fragments of Deuterocanonical books and of other writings have also been found. But it is important to remember that the terms “biblical” and “deuterocanonical” did not yet exist in the time that these scrolls were written. So these are books from the Jewish tradition which were later called “biblical” or “canonical”.

At Qumran roughly 200 scrolls of books of the Hebrew Old Testament have been found. Fragments have been preserved of almost all the books of the Old Testament (only the book of Esther is missing). One of the most spectacular finds is the complete scroll of Isaiah. The most fragments found are of Isaiah, the Psalms and the books of the Pentateuch.

The Qumran discoveries are of enormous value for the study of the Old Testament. Tangible documents are now available of the text of the Old Testament which are a good 1 000 years older than the previously known text, the Codex Leningradensis. By comparing the text with the text of the Dead Sea Scrolls we know more about the development of the text of the Old Testament (see also textual criticism).