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Dead Sea Scrolls—The Prized FindThe Watchtower—1991 | April 15
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Dead Sea Scrolls—The Prized Find
ABOUT 15 miles [24 km] southeast of Jerusalem, Wadi En-Nar, a desolate, dry watercourse runs eastward down to the Dead Sea. A broken line of cliffs stretches behind the shoreline plain. On this plain, in the hot days and contrasting cold nights of autumn, the Ta‘amireh Bedouin tend their flocks of sheep and goats.
In the year 1947, while tending the flocks, a young Bedouin shepherd threw a stone into a small opening in the crumbling face of a cliff. He was startled by the noise it caused, apparently by shattering an earthenware jar. He fled in fear, but two days later he returned and climbed some 300 feet [100 m] to enter through a larger, higher opening. As his eyes became accustomed to the darkness, he saw ten tall jars lining the walls of the cave, and a mass of broken pottery amid fallen rocks littered the floor.
Most of the jars were empty, but one contained three scrolls, two of which were cloth-covered. He took the manuscripts back to the Bedouin camp and left them there for about a month, hanging in a bag on a tent pole. Finally, some Bedouin took the scrolls to Bethlehem to see how much they would fetch. The Bedouin were unceremoniously turned away from one monastery, being told that the scrolls were of no value whatever. Another dealer said that the manuscripts had no archaeological merit, and he suspected that they had been stolen from a Jewish synagogue. How wrong he was! Eventually, with a Syrian cobbler acting as broker, their worth was rightfully established. Soon, other manuscripts were evaluated.
Some of these ancient writings opened up a whole new insight into the activity of Jewish religious groups about the time of Christ. But it was a Bible manuscript of Isaiah’s prophecy that excited the world. Why?
The Great Prize
The newly discovered scroll of Isaiah was originally about 25 feet [7.5 m] long. It was made up of 17 sheets of carefully prepared animal skin, nearly as refined as parchment. Composed in 54 columns averaging 30 lines each, it had been carefully ruled. On these lines the skilled penman had placed the letters of the text, written in paragraphs.—See photograph.
The scroll had not been rolled around sticks, and it was much darker in the center where many hands had held it for reading. It was well-worn, with skillful repairs and reinforcements in evidence. Its fine preservation was due to its having been carefully sealed in a jar. How valuable is it to the Bible scholar, and, by extension, to all of us?
This manuscript of the prophet Isaiah is some one thousand years older than any other surviving copy, yet its contents are not greatly different. Said Professor Millar Burrows, the editor of the text that was published in 1950: “The text of Isaiah in this manuscript, with significant differences in spelling and grammar and many variant readings of more or less interest and importance, is substantially that presented considerably later in the MT [Masoretic Hebrew Text].”a Also noteworthy is its consistent use of the Tetragrammaton, יהוה, God’s holy name, Jehovah, in Hebrew.
Other Valuable Manuscripts
The divine name also appears in another manuscript from this same cave, now known as Cave 1. In a commentary on the book of Habakkuk, the Tetragrammaton appears four times in paleo-Hebrew letters, an older style that contrasts with the more familiar square Hebrew lettering.—See the footnote to Habakkuk 1:9, Reference Bible.
The cave yielded portions of another Isaiah scroll, along with leather fragments from the Bible book of Daniel. One of these preserves the change from Hebrew to Aramaic at Daniel 2:4, just as found in manuscripts of a thousand years later.
Small parts of the scrolls that are well preserved are now exhibited in Jerusalem, in the museum known as the Shrine of the Book. This museum is underground, so as you visit there, you have the impression of entering a cave. The upper part of the museum is in the shape of the lid of the earthenware jar in which the Dead Sea Scroll of Isaiah was discovered. Yet, you see only a facsimile of the Isaiah manuscript. The precious original rests safely in the storeroom nearby.
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Dead Sea Scrolls—Unprecedented TreasureThe Watchtower—1991 | April 15
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Dead Sea Scrolls—Unprecedented Treasure
AT THE foot of Wadi Qumran, on the northwest side of the Dead Sea, lie some ancient ruins. Long considered to be the remains of a Roman fort, they had received little attention from archaeologists. The discovery of the Dead Sea Scroll of Isaiah in 1947, however, prompted reconsideration of the site.
Soon scholars identified the buildings as belonging to a religious community of the Jews. The immediate assumption was that these people had hidden the scrolls in the caves among the cliffs nearby. But later discoveries seemed to cast doubt on that.
An Unprecedented Find
Bedouin were alert to the value of the manuscripts they had already found. So, in 1952, when an old man recounted that as a youth he had chased a wounded partridge until it disappeared into a hole in the rock face, where he found some pottery and an ancient oil lamp, a fresh search got under way.
The old man was still able to identify the cave mouth among the deep clefts of the precipitous cliff. It turned out to be a man-made cave, now identified as Cave 4. There the Bedouin found pieces of manuscripts a few feet [about a meter] below the then existing level of the floor. None of the pieces had been stored in jars, so most were badly decayed, blackened, and very brittle. In time some 40,000 fragments were recovered, representing nearly 400 manuscripts. All the books of the Hebrew Scriptures, with the exception of Esther, were represented among the one hundred Bible manuscripts. Much of the material recovered from Cave 4 has not yet been published.
One of the more significant manuscripts was of the books of Samuel, copied in a single roll. Its Hebrew text, preserved in 47 columns out of a probable 57, is very similar to that used by the translators of the Greek Septuagint version. There are also Greek fragments of the Septuagint from Leviticus and Numbers that date back to the first century B.C.E. The Leviticus manuscript uses IAO, for the Hebrew יהוה, the divine name of God, instead of the Greek Kyʹri·os, “Lord.”a
In a fragment from Deuteronomy, the Hebrew text includes the portion from De chapter 32, verse 43, found in the Septuagint and quoted at Hebrews 1:6: “And let all God’s angels do obeisance to him.” This is the first time this line has been found in any Hebrew manuscript, revealing a text that evidently underlies the Greek translation. Scholars have thus gained new insight into the text of the Septuagint, so often quoted in the Christian Greek Scriptures.
An Exodus scroll has been dated to the third quarter of the third century B.C.E., one of Samuel to the end of the same century, and a scroll of Jeremiah to between 225 and 175 B.C.E. Sufficient material from the third to the first century B.C.E. has been found to trace changes in writing styles and individual letters of the Hebrew and Aramaic alphabets, something of great value in dating manuscripts.
The Surprise of Cave 11
Eventually, the whole area around Qumran had been thoroughly searched, both by local Bedouin and by archaeologists. Yet, one day in 1956, some Bedouin noticed bats emerging from crevices in the cliffs north of Cave 1. They climbed up and found another cave, the entrance of which was blocked. Two tons of fallen rock had to be removed to expose it. The finds inside were astounding—two complete manuscripts and five large portions of others.
The most significant find was a beautiful scroll of Psalms. The thickness of the leather suggests that it is probably calfskin rather than goatskin. A total of five sheets, four separable leaves, and four fragments give it a length of more than 13 feet [4 m]. Although the top of this scroll is well preserved, the bottom edge is considerably decayed. It dates from the first half of the first century C.E. and contains parts of 41 psalms. The Tetragrammaton is written some 105 times in ancient paleo-Hebrew characters, making it stand out amid the square Hebrew script of the context.
Another manuscript, of Leviticus, is written entirely in the ancient Hebrew script, but why this is so has not yet been adequately explained. It is the longest document in existence using this form of writing, which was in use when the Jews went into Babylonian exile at the end of the seventh century B.C.E.
A copy of a Targum, an Aramaic paraphrase of the book of Job, also came to light. It is among the earliest Targums committed to writing. A number of commentaries on other Bible books were also found in different caves. How did all these scrolls come to be hidden so well in these caves?
As mentioned earlier, some may have been concealed by the Qumran community. But from the evidence, it seems quite likely that many were put there by Jews fleeing the Roman advance on Judea in the year 68 C.E., before the final destruction of Jerusalem two years later. The Judean wilderness was a safe natural haven for the precious manuscripts not only in the caves close to Qumran but in those many miles to the north, around Jericho, and to the south, near Masada. How grateful we are for their preservation! They give further proof of the unchangeableness of Jehovah’s inspired Word. Truly, “as for the word of our God, it will last to time indefinite.”—Isaiah 40:8.
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