The Dead Sea Scrolls
by Wendy AronFound at the southern end of the Jordan Valley in 1947, The Dead Sea scrolls are among the most important archeological finds of the 20th century. Written around the time of Jesus, the Dead Sea scrolls hold precious secrets about early Judaism and the birth of Christianity Overtime, more scrolls have been unearthed by archeologists. Still others, reached first by profiteers have surfaced in Middle Eastern bazaars.
The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls begins in 1947 with a Bedouin; groups of Arabs who wandered the hills with their sheep and goats. The story goes that a young man known as ‘The Wolf’ was tending his flock. Looking for a stray in a cave, he threw a stone inside only to hear the sound of it hitting a jar. The wolf returned to his encampment with strange scrolls made of dried stretched animal skin. It's said that the wind blew some fragments away and children played with others. Some were used to repair sandals and some even used for kindling. Still others found their way to an Arab trader in Bethlehem named Kando. This was at the time of the violent birth of the state of Israel and feelings were running high between Arabs and incoming Jews. It's said the Arab Kando suspecting the scrolls contained an ancient form of Jewish writing, deliberately destroyed one of them fearing for his own safety should he be found in possession of such a precious Jewish document.
Eventually, academics were able to locate the cave which contained the fragments. They found that the Dead Sea scrolls were written in a rare and unfamiliar form of Hebrew. The experts were awestruck by this discovery because before the Dead Sea Scrolls came to light, the earliest existing Hebrew texts were medieval from around the 11th century AD. Now there were versions from a 1000 years earlier, from the dawn of Christianity and before, undistorted by later errors and theological censorship.
But who wrote these fragments? A Dead Sea scrolls translation indicates that it was a desert sect that had its roots beneath modern day Jerusalem. Around 150 years before the time of Jesus, Judaism had fragmented into a number of sects such as the Pharisees and the Sadducees. All of them were arguing among themselves. One group of dissident priests rebelling at what they saw as corruption and political in fighting among the temple hierarchy, left in disgust for the desert. With them they carried scrolls, books from the Hebrew Scriptures. On the shores of the Dead Sea, at the lowest place on the face of the earth, these Jewish dissidents founded a community at the ruins of an old Jewish fort at Qumran.
Contents of the Dead Sea Scrolls
In the cool of the evenings, these Qumranites began to make precious copies of their Hebrew scriptures. The Qumran’s scrolls showed that this sect was intellectually advanced. They developed a sophisticated solar calendar and had medical knowledge writing about the flow of blood in the body. The Qumranites also began to write their own religious works.
Because these Qumran’s scrolls were being written at a time of much Jewish turmoil and the formation of Christianity, they provide invaluable information, particularly as there was so little other documentation from the period. As well as providing new insights into the Qumran Sect, these scrolls also help clear up more mundane biblical oddities.
But there were more than parts of the Hebrew Bible found in the cave. There were never before seen writings, including an amazing war scroll of the Qumranites. These new writings not only brought to light the vision of the Qumranites, but the world of Jesus and the controversies he became involved with.
The Dead Sea Scrolls translation began to rewrite the birth of modern Judaism and Christianity. But finding the remaining Qumran’s scrolls is a race against time. Even as scroll traffickers haggle over the fragments, they're decomposing. New technology is enhancing the fading images of the Dead Sea scrolls and allowing scraps to be reunited to gather new information on the Dead Sea scrolls. This is fueling an ongoing debate about their meaning. Even as experts use new technology to unlock their profound meaning, the stakes grow higher, as potentially key fragments are held for ransom in the shady world of scroll traders.
