Dead Sea Scrolls – Class 1

“The greatest manuscript discovery of modern times.”

- William Foxwell Albright

Geza Vermes

Khirbet Qumran

Dead Sea Scrolls

THE STORY OF THEIR DISCOVERY

Bedouin Boy

Cave 1 discovered 1947Book of Isaiah

Rule of the Community

Pesher Habakkuak

Genesis Apocryphon

Thanksgiving Hymns, sectarian prayers

Scroll of the War of the Sons of Light against the Sons of Darkness

Another scroll of Isaiah

Prof. Eleazar Sukenik

St. Mark’s Monastery

Also on November 20, 1947

Professor Eliezer SukenikKando

also on November 29, 1947

Classified Ad, The Wall Street Journal, June 1, 1954

Yigael Yadin (1917-1984)“I cannot avoid the feeling that there is something symbolic in the discovery of the scrolls and their acquisition at the moment of the creation of the State of Israel. It is as if these manuscripts had been waiting in caves for two thousand years, ever since the destruction of Israel’s independence, until the people of Israel had returned to their home and regained their freedom. This symbolism is heightened by the fact that the first three scrolls were bought by my father for Israel on 29th November, 1947, the very day on which the United Nations voted for the re-creation of the Jewish state in Israel after two thousand years. These facts may have influenced my approach to the scrolls. It was a tremendously exciting experience, difficult to convey in words, to see the original scrolls and to study them, knowing that some of the Biblical manuscripts were copied only a few hundred years after their composition, and that these very scrolls were read and studied by our forefathers in the period of the Second Temple. They constitute a vital link—long lost and now regained—between those ancient times, so rich in civilized thought, and the present day. And just as a Christian reader must be moved by the knowledge that here he has a manuscript of a sect whom the early Christians may have known and by whom they may have been influenced, so an Israeli and a Jew can find nothing more deeply moving than the study of manuscripts written by the People of the Book in the Land of the Book more than two thousand years ago.”

Inside Cave 4

Jar that held some Scrolls

Temple Scroll

Shrine of the Book, Jerusalem

Sons of Light vs. Sons of Darkness

Most Popular Books in Scrolls

Books   No. found  

Psalms 39

Deuteronomy 33

1Enoch 25

Genesis 24

Isaiah 22

Jubilees 21

Exodus 18

Leviticus 17

Numbers 11

Minor Prophets 10

Daniel 8

Jeremiah 6

Ezekiel 6

Job 6

1 & 2 Samuel 4

Types of Books in Scrolls

1. Books of the Bible

2. Books of the Apocrypha, Pseudepigrapha and other books common to all Jews of Second Temple period (prayers, mystical writings, biblical commentary)

3. Sectarian books belonging to the sect only

Khirbet Qumran

Map of the Qumran

“Monastery”

Digital Reconstruction of Qumran