The Dead Sea Scrolls: Discovery of Dead Sea Scrolls

Dead Sea Scrolls are a collection of ancient manuscripts totalling about 800 scrolls and fragments of documents written between 200 B.C. and 68 A.D. The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in 1947 in 11 caves in the settlement of Qumran located in North-western Shore of the Dead Sea. The texts are of great religious and historical significance, as they include some of the only known surviving copies of Biblical documents. They are written in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek, mostly on parchment, and some written on papyrus.

Two of the Bedouin shepherds by the names of Jum’a Muhammad and Mohammed Ahmed el-Hamed (nicknamed edh-Dhib “the wolf”) made the first discovery of the 7 intact scrolls from cave 1. The Bedouin shepherds eventually brought some of the scrolls to a cobbler and antiquities dealer in Bethlehem named Khando, with his mediator George Isaiah took the scrolls to St. Mark’s monastery belonging to the Syrian Church in Jerusalem and four of the scrolls were sold to Mar Athanasius Yeshua Samuel the Syrian Metropolitan of the monastery, who purchased for £24. Yeshua Samuel’s attempts to sell the scrolls failed numerous occasions; in June 1 1954 he placed a ad in The Wall Street Journal, advertising the four Dead Sea Scrolls for sale. The four scrolls were anonymously purchased by state of Israel for $250,000 and with the finding of the rest of the 7 intact scrolls; they were brought into Jerusalem where it is housed in the Shrine of the Book, a museum specifically built to preserve the manuscripts for the future generations.

The Dead Sea Scrolls text can be categorize into 3 major sections biblical, apocryphal and sectarian. The biblical manuscripts contained some two hundred copies of all the books of the Hebrew Bible except for the book of Ester. Apocryphal writings are not part of the Hebrew Bible. The sectarian describes the works, of Qumran community’s religious and organizational practices and does reflect a wide variety of literary genres: biblical commentary, religious-legal writings, liturgical texts, and apocalyptic compositions.

As for the research process I started with the book of the “The complete world of The Dead Sea Scrolls written by Philip R. Davies, George J. Brooke and Phillip R Callaway and the book of “The meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls” by James Vanderkam and Peter flint which both were borrowed from my local library. I also searched via Google and retrieved information on the Discoveries of Dead Sea Scrolls from the encyclopaedia of Nationmaster.com site and the Chronological and Thematic Studies on the History of Information and Media website. The West Semitic Research Project was another helpful site which retrieved information on the discoveries of Dead Sea Scrolls. Images for this post were taken from “The world’s foremost publisher of illuminated manuscripts” website. The Image of the Wall Street Journal advertisement was taken from the book “The complete world of The Dead Sea Scrolls”.

Bibliography:

Davis, R Philip, Brooke, J George & Callaway, R Phillip 2002, The complete world of dead sea Scrolls, Thames & Hudson ltd, London.

Vanderkam, James, & Flint, Peter 2002, The meaning of the dead sea scrolls: their significance for understanding the Bible, Judaism, Jesus, and Christianity, 1st edn, Harper Collins Publishers Inc., NY.

Discovery 2007, Nation Master, viewed 18 September 2011, http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Dead-Sea-scrolls#Discovery

The Discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls 2000, West Semitic Research Project, viewed 18 September 2011, <http://www.usc.edu/dept/LAS/wsrp/educational_site/dead_sea_scrolls/discovery.shtml>

The Dead Sea Scrolls (300 BCE – 68 CE)2004, Jeremy Norman & Co., Inc., viewed 18 September 2011, <http://www.historyofinformation.com/index.php?id=175>

Davis, R Philip, Brooke, J George & Callaway, R Phillip 2002, The complete world of dead sea Scrolls, Thames & Hudson ltd, London, pp.6-7.