The ancient manuscripts known as the Dead Sea Scrolls have been called by scientists “the greatest chirographic discovery of present times.” These scripts contain scrolls of the Torah and non-biblical texts, which are dated from 100 BC to 68 AD. The discovered writings are not original manuscripts, but copies produced by scribes. They are determined to be a thousand years older than the oldest attested traditional Hebrew text of the Torah, which make up the basis of the Old Testament translated into English.
The first scrolls were discovered in 1947 in a cave on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea, in Jordan. They were encountered by a Bedouin shepherd, who in later years varied his story of the discovery details. One version told …show more content…
Jordan’s government sent it over to the Manchester Technology College in England, where Professor Wright-Baker developed a way to mount the fragments on a spindle and to slice them into so paper-thin strips that the writings could be read. The script revealed a long list of hiding places for enormously valuable treasures, being hidden in wells and tombs, near certain trees and springs. Some archeologists regarded the list as imaginary or symbolic, others considered it for a catalog of King Solomon's Treasures, and thirds believed it to itemize real treasures of the Essenes.
The Dead Sea Scrolls were composed during one of the most decisive periods in the Jewish people’s history, shortly before the Christianity birth. The 10,000 scroll fragments provide an immense number of new materials to help study the biblical texts and the folks, who wrote them as well as the Jewish history after the 4th century BC. There existed a lengthy controversy over the access to the scrolls being limited only to a selected few scholars, which was partially settled in the early 1990’s after copies of the scripts were after all
The first scrolls were discovered in 1947 in a cave on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea, in Jordan. They were encountered by a Bedouin shepherd, who in later years varied his story of the discovery details. One version told …show more content…
Jordan’s government sent it over to the Manchester Technology College in England, where Professor Wright-Baker developed a way to mount the fragments on a spindle and to slice them into so paper-thin strips that the writings could be read. The script revealed a long list of hiding places for enormously valuable treasures, being hidden in wells and tombs, near certain trees and springs. Some archeologists regarded the list as imaginary or symbolic, others considered it for a catalog of King Solomon's Treasures, and thirds believed it to itemize real treasures of the Essenes.
The Dead Sea Scrolls were composed during one of the most decisive periods in the Jewish people’s history, shortly before the Christianity birth. The 10,000 scroll fragments provide an immense number of new materials to help study the biblical texts and the folks, who wrote them as well as the Jewish history after the 4th century BC. There existed a lengthy controversy over the access to the scrolls being limited only to a selected few scholars, which was partially settled in the early 1990’s after copies of the scripts were after all