The Impact of the Dead Sea Scrolls

Top Highlights

“In the broad sense, it denotes texts, not discovered in the Dead Sea itself, but in caves and holes along the northwest shore of the Dead Sea between 1947 and 1963.” (Page 1)

“These Qumran Scrolls have supplied texts that fall into three groups: (1) biblical texts (copies of every book of the OT, except Esther); (2) sectarian texts (rulebooks, liturgical, and poetic writings); and (3) parabiblical Jewish documents, often misnamed ‘intertestamental’ (Enoch, Jubilees, etc.).” (Page 11)

“In one instance, the text is preserved in both Hebrew and Aramaic (the deuterocanonical Book of Tobit)” (Page v)

“A Bedouin boy, subsequently identified as Jum‘a Muhammad Khalil, had been tending goats, when one of them went astray. As he went in search of it, he idly tossed a stone through a hole in a cliff and heard it break something. Out of curiosity, he and some companions returned two days later, enlarged the hole, and crept into a small cave. There one of the companions, Muhammad ed-Di’b, discovered eight jars, in two of which he found seven scrolls, some wrapped in ancient linen, along with many fragments. In March 1947, he and his companions brought the scrolls and fragments to an antiquities dealer in Bethlehem, known as Kando (Khalil Iskander Shahin).” (Pages 2–3)

“The result of this remarkable find between 1947 and 1956 has been hailed as ‘the greatest manuscript discovery of modern times’ (W. F. Albright).” (Page 10)