Dead Sea Scrolls Resources

The Dead Sea Scrolls are a collection of the remains of around 930 individual manuscripts found in 11 caves around the Dead Sea and the site of Qumran. The term also applies to ancient texts found in other caves and locations in Judean Desert (bringing the total number of scrolls to around more than 1,000), but it primarily indicates those found around Qumran. They contain copies of biblical, apocryphal, extrabiblical, and sectarian texts (along with some too small to be identified) written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek.

While there are too many scrolls to go into detail on each one here, the complete corpus is presented in the 40-volume scholarly series, Discoveries in the Judean Desert. This pie chart shows a general breakdown of the scrolls by genre.

The short answer is no. Neither Jesus nor the emerging Christian community is mentioned explicitly in any of the scrolls. Some fringe theories have, however, made claims to have found hidden or veiled references to Jesus, John the Baptist, and Christian teachings. None of these theories are held by the consensus of scholars today.

The more than 900 Dead Sea Scrolls recovered between 1947 and 1956 from the caves around Qumran and other sites around the Dead Sea are considered authentic by scholars. They have been authenticated from the fact that many were found in situ, that is, in their original archaeological context, through controlled excavations, on the basis of the forms of the letters used to write them, known as paleography, and confirmed by carbon-14 tests and chemical analysis of the ink and parchment. Joins between fragments excavated by archaeologists and those found by Bedouin also demonstrate the fragments’ authenticity. These scrolls span about three centuries, from the mid-third century BCE to the end of the first century CE.

The Dead Sea Scrolls were primarily found in 11 caves around the site of Qumran. The term also includes finds from several other caves and the site of Masada that date from the 7th century BCE through the Crusader period. You can see the locations of the caves around Qumran and others in which scrolls were found on the map below. The number of scrolls found in the Qumran caves is also listed.

·      Cave 1 = 7 manuscripts, including 1QIsa(a), the Great Isaiah Scroll, plus 600 fragments

·      Cave 2 = 33 manuscripts

·      Cave 3 = 15 manuscripts, including the Copper Scroll

·      Cave 4 = ~600 manuscripts (15,000 fragments)

·      Cave 5 = 25 manuscripts

·      Cave 6 = 31 manuscripts (more papyrus than parchment)

·      Cave 7 = 19 manuscripts, some in Greek

·      Cave 8 = 5 manuscripts

·      Cave 9 = 1 manuscript

·      Cave 10 = 1 ostracon (broken pottery sherd with writing)

·      Cave 11 = 31 manuscripts

This question is usually about which group scholars consider to have lived at Qumran and copied a large number of the scrolls. Though some of the scrolls, including some of the oldest copies and those in Greek, were brought to the caves around Qumran rather than being copied by the community there, given that archaeologists have found several inkwells at the site, it seems certain that some texts were copied there. This is especially true of the sectarian documents, that is, those that outline the community’s beliefs, such as the Community Rule or the Damascus Document.

The most common identification of the Qumran community is a group called the Essenes. This suggestion goes back to the time of the scrolls’ discovery and is based on descriptions of the Essenes by Josephus, Philo of Alexandria, and Pliny the Elder, as well as evidence from the sectarian scrolls themselves.

For example, Pliny the Elder mentions a group of Essenes living on the Dead Sea “above En Gedi,” which many scholars read as “north,” and which would match Qumran’s location. He also describes some of their communal rules, such as excluding women from their group and the sharing of money and wealth. These descriptions fit with the archaeology of the site and evidence from the sectarian documents. Though we cannot say with absolute certainty the Qumran community was Essenes, it seems very likely they were.

Still, arguments over the group’s identity persist. The fact that the name “Essene” does not appear in any manuscript is often cited, as are differences between Josephus’s description of Essenes and the beliefs and customs mentioned in some of the community scrolls. Further, some continue to argue that the scrolls are not related to the Qumran community, being brought there before the community settled there.

The Qumran community considered themselves “men of the New Covenant,” a new community with a renewed focus on piety and purity standing in opposition to other Jewish groups, or sects, of the day, especially the Sadducean temple leadership. (Tov, 4th ed., 115) The focus on purity and piety coincided with the group’s belief in the imminent coming of the End of Days and the need to be prepared for its arrival.

This opposition was expressed most clearly in a text known as the War Scroll or the War Rule. This text provides instructions and prophecies for a final apocalyptic battle in which the members of the Qumran community, called the “Sons of Light,” will wage war against the “Sons of Darkness,” and ultimately emerge victorious. The Sons of Darkness are foreign kings led by the Kittim, likely a cipher for Rome, as well as other Jewish groups with which the Qumran community disagreed.

The Torah was central for the Qumran community, and the Psalms. In fact, the Rule of the Community states that one third of every night was to be spent in reading and studying the sacred texts.

The general membership will be diligent together for the first third of every night of the year, reading aloud from the Book (sefer), interpreting Scripture (mishpat) and praying together. (1QS 6:7–8) – Tov, Textual Criticism, 4th ed., 114

Torah study, as might be expected, was particularly emphasized.

In any place where is gathered the ten-man quorum, someone must always be engaged in study of the Law, day and night, continually, each one taking his turn. (1QS 6:6–7) - Tov, Textual Criticism, 4th ed., 114

However, what constituted the “Bible” or “sacred texts” for the community is difficult, if not impossible, to determine. While the books of the Hebrew Bible, especially the Torah and the Psalms, exist in abundant copies, pointing to their prominence, books that are not included in the canon of the Hebrew Bible but do exist in the Septuagint, like Sirach and Tobit, are also present at Qumran. Were these books on an equal footing with some of the books accepted into the later Masoretic Text? The Temple Scroll, a sectarian work of the Qumran community, which exists in five copies, similar to some biblical scrolls, may also have been considered authoritative to a degree.

In addition to Torah study, ritual purity was a primary concern of the Qumran group. Only members who were ritually pure would be allowed to join the Sons of Light in the final battle against the Sons of Darkness. Strict rules for initiation dictated a two-year waiting period for full admission to the group, during which time initiates became increasingly pure and were admitted to more of the community’s practices and meetings. The presence of numerous mikva’ot at the site of Qumran—a site in the desert!—has been interpreted by some as evidence for the strict level of ritual washing required by the community.

This emphasis on purity, however, should not be taken to mean that other Jewish groups were uninterested in these matters. They were, as the many ritual baths found in Jerusalem and other Jewish sites dating to this period reflect. Rather, the evidence from the sectarian documents at Qumran provides a glimpse into the debates over purity and piety that were current at the time. Debates like these existed between all Jewish groups at this time.

The so-called sectarian literature from the Qumran caves is considered to contain the unique viewpoints of the community who inhabited Qumran. These scrolls, such as the Temple Scroll, the War Scroll, and the Damascus Document, were very likely written and copied at the site.

Other scrolls, however, especially biblical and non-sectarian scrolls, seem to have been brought to the site by people seeking to join the community at Qumran. Some of these scrolls were undoubtedly used to make additional copies of biblical texts found at the site. Determining how many biblical scrolls were copied at Qumran is difficult, but one study of 143 scrolls suggested that about a quarter of them were produced at the site. If this number is extrapolated for the entire corpus of 222 biblical scrolls, then perhaps as many as one third of the biblical scrolls were produced by the Qumran community.

The most likely theory suggests that the inhabitants of the community stored or hid many of the scrolls in the caves immediately surrounding the site in the face of the Roman army’s advance on the settlement. Other scrolls in the caves may have been hidden by different refugees or communities fleeing the Roman legions, too, and some of the scrolls (such as those in Cave 4) were likely in the caves because that’s where they were kept.

Yes, the community would have known how to take care of their scrolls. Some, for example those found in Cave 1, were preserved in linen wrappers and sealed jars. However, all scrolls deteriorate over time and must be recopied. The community at Qumran was engaged in copying scrolls, biblical and sectarian, to keep their library current.

Before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Nash Papyrus was the oldest copy of the Bible, dating to around 125 BCE. It contains parts of the Ten Commandments and the Shema of Deuteronomy 6.

About a dozen of the Dead Sea Scrolls are preserved to sufficient length to still be able to roll them out as “scrolls.” Many others, however, show evidence of having been rolled as “scrolls” in antiquity. The largest remaining are:

·      The Great Isaiah Scroll (1QIsa(a)), 7.3 meters/24 feet long, ca. 125 BCE

·      The Temple Scroll (11Q19), 8.1 meters/26.5 feet long, late 2nd century BCE

·      The War Scroll (1QM), 2 meters/6.5 feet long, late 1st century BCE

·      Thanksgiving Hymns (1QHa), 1.9 meters/6.2 feet long

·      Psalms Scroll (11QPs(a)), 1.5 meters/5 feet long

·      Genesis Apocryphon (1Q20), 1.4 meters/4.6 feet long

·      Damascus Document (CD), 1.3 meters/4.3 feet long

·      Rule of the Congregation (1QSa), 1.2 meters/4 feet long

·      Ruler of the Blessing (1QSb), 1.1 meters/3.6 feet long

·      The Copper Scroll (3Q15), 2 copper “rolls,” .3 meters each, ca. 50–100 CE

·      Paleo-Leviticus Scroll (11Q1), .5 meters/1.6 feet long, ca.

Paleography and carbon-14 dating have largely confirmed the scrolls date to the span of 250 BCE–68 CE. For those scrolls that scholars believe can be dated, the majority, some 418, are dated to the last period of settlement at Qumran, around 50 or 30 BCE to 68 CE. The second-largest set, containing some 224 texts, dates to the period before this, known as the Hasmonean period, which spans from ca. 150 BCE to ca. 50 BCE. Only about 40 manuscripts are dated earlier than the Hasmonean period. It should be noted that some scholars have proposed dates in the 4th century BCE for some of the scrolls.

Period                                                          Number of Manuscripts

Archaic (250–150 BCE)                             21
Archaic to Hasmonean (200–150)           20
Hasmonean (150–ca. 50)                          224
Transition to Herodian (ca. 75–1)              5
Herodian (50/30 BCE–68 CE)                   418

*Numbers from Vanderkam and Flint, The Meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls: Their Significance for Understanding the Bible, Judaism, Jesus, and Christianity, 2002, 26.

This boxes on the top of this timeline shows the numbers of manuscripts, both those collected at the site and those produced in copies or as originals by the community, associated with the different time periods of the Qumran group’s habitation of the site. As one can see, the majority of the texts date to the final period, known as the Herodian period, with the next largest set dating to the Hasmonean period before it. Events and figures from both of these historical periods correspond to characters and events in the scrolls.

Anyone who knows Hebrew and can read the scripts from the third centuries BCE to the first century CE, as well as the paleo-Hebrew script from pre-exilic Israel, can read the majority of the scrolls. Aramaic and Greek would be needed to read the few remaining fragments. However, the scrolls are mostly read today by scholars.

All but one of the scrolls are made of the biodegradable materials parchment and papyrus. The first seven scrolls were largely intact, especially the Great Isaiah Scroll (1QIsa(a)), because these were found in jars, and were likely wrapped in linen, which helped preserve them. The many hundreds of scrolls that were not stored in jars, perhaps because of the haste in which the site was abandoned before the Roman army, they slowly degraded into tens of thousands of fragments over the course of 2,000 years. It is amazing, in fact, that so many fragments survived for so long.

That they have is, in large part, due to the conservation work undertaken by the Israel Antiquities Authority. The efforts made by the IAA over the past 35 years have ensured the conservation of these precious documents by undoing earlier damage (from the initial storage and research) and conserving and monitoring the fragments so that they continue to survive for generations to come.

The answer to this question depends on what is most important to a particular researcher or reader. Without doubt, however, finding Cave 4 must rank as one of the most significant. Cave 4 is a man-made double cave that once served as a library/storage site for the community at Qumran. Archaeologists found tens of thousands of fragments there, helping us reconstruct a majority of the scrolls.

The majority are stored, conserved, and curated by the Israel Antiquities Authority in their climate controlled facilities. This includes materials from the 11 caves surrounding Qumran and other discovery sites, such as the Wadi Murabaat and Hever caves, Wadi Daliyeh and Hirbet Mird and Masada. The Shrine of the Book at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem houses and exhibits the scrolls from Cave 1 at Qumran, which are among the best-preserved scrolls. Several others, including the Copper Scroll, are in a collection in Jordan.

Biblical texts make up around 230 of the scrolls from Caves 1–11. Here are some numbers and facts about the breakdown of books of the Bible.

Books with the most copies:

• Psalms: 36 copies
• Deuteronomy: 35 copies
• Genesis: 23–24 copies
• Isaiah: 21 copies

This breakdown above, with the exception of Genesis, matches the most-cited books in the New Testament, too.

The next most-represented books are:

• Exodus: 16 copies
• Leviticus: 15 copies
• Book of the Twelve: 8 copies
• Daniel: 8 copies

Fun fact: 9 copies of the Torah are written in paleo-Hebrew script. Other scrolls have only the divine name, YHWH, in paleo-Hebrew script.

Books found only in Orthodox and Catholic canons are also present:

• Tobit: 5 copies in Aramaic and Hebrew
• Sirach/Ecclesiasticus/Wisdom of Jesus ben Sira: 2 copies
• Letter of Jeremiah: 1 copy
• Psalm 151(a and b): 1 copy (the Great Psalms Scroll)

Books preserved only in the Ethiopian Canon are also present:

• Enoch, 12 copies
• Jubilees, ~15 copies

This is one of the most asked and most mis-answered, and therefore most misunderstood, questions surrounding the Dead Sea Scrolls. In almost every case, no, they are not EXACTLY the same. However, the differences between them should NOT be overstated. No major doctrinal or biblical positions are different in any significant way. Broadly speaking, the differences are of two types: differences in writing conventions (spelling, vocabulary) and differences in format and content (order of verses, inclusions and deletions, etc.).

The medieval copies of the Hebrew Bible known as the Masoretic Text are the product of centuries of work to stabilize and fix one tradition among several of the biblical text—in spelling, vocabulary, and word, verse, and chapter order—by the Masoretes. Thus, differences between the different Masoretic texts, like the Leningrad Codex and the Aleppo Codex, are very small and often the result of copying errors rather than reflecting different “textual traditions.”

During the Second Temple period, however, the exact text of the Hebrew Bible was not fixed. Different Jewish groups preserved (slightly) different forms and traditions of the texts, and because these groups were separated by distance and, to some degree, ideology, different textual traditions of the Hebrew Bible existed simultaneously. These traditions have the prefix “proto-” to show that they are still in development at this time:

• The Proto-Masoretic Text—this became the textual tradition of rabbinic Judaism and would be stabilized and fixed by the ninth century CE by the Masoretes. This is the text of the Hebrew Bible today, used by Jews and most Protestant Old Testament translations. Examples of the Proto-Masoretic Text differ only by 1–2% from the medieval Masoretic Text. This tradition is not found in the scrolls from the 11 caves around Qumran, but does exist in a tefillin text.
• The Proto-Samaritan Pentateuch—this tradition identifies only the books of the Torah as authoritative for Samaritans, and it also identifies Mt. Gerizim, not Jerusalem, as the place chosen by God for his name to dwell. This textual tradition survives in the Samaritan Pentateuch used today by Samaritans.
• The Hebrew text used for the Septuagint—the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible likely undertaken in Egypt, including books not accepted by the rabbis in the final canon of the Tanakh, like Sirach, Tobit, and so on (called the Apocrypha by Protestant Christians today). This translation became the version of the Hebrew Bible used by the early church. The Greek translation is still used by the Greek Orthodox Church. It was eventually translated into Latin, becoming the Vulgate used by the Catholic Church.
• Masoretic Text-Like Manuscripts—This group of texts differs with respect to the medieval Masoretic Text by 3–10%, rather than the smaller 1–2% of the Proto-Masoretic Text examples. Many of these Masoretic Text-Like scrolls are also similar to those categorized as the Hebrew text used for the Septuagint or the Proto-Samaritan Pentateuch. This tradition is widely attested in the scrolls found in the caves around Qumran. For example, the Great Isaiah Scroll, 1QIsa(a), belongs to this group. It ranges between 9.9% and 18.5% in content variants, and between 8.6% and 18.8% in spelling variants.
• Nonaligned Texts—Some manuscripts, especially those fragments that contain too small a textual sample, cannot be grouped with any of the above categories in a clear fashion.

These different versions must be kept in mind when assessing the differences between the text of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the medieval Masoretic Text. For example, scholars would not assume texts belonging to the Septuagint tradition would, or even should, match the texts of the later Masoretic tradition. Likewise, texts that are early examples of what would become the Masoretic tradition would not be expected to match texts of the later Samaritan Pentateuch. The existence of a large number of Masoretic Text-Like manuscripts in the scrolls from the Qumran caves, and no Proto-Masoretic Texts in those scrolls, also shows that the Proto-Masoretic Text was not authoritative in the Second Temple period.

Within each of these textual traditions, changes in writing conventions between later or medieval copies of the Masoretic Text, Septuagint, and Samaritan Pentateuch, and the texts of the Dead Sea Scrolls can be seen. These changes consist of the following:

• Orthographic—The Hebrew alphabet does not have unique signs for vowels, but in later stages of the writing system some consonants are used to indicate vowels. Several of the Qumran scrolls show the use of these vowel letters in their copies, but they are not maintained in the Masoretic Text.
• Vocabulary—In some scrolls, some of the words in the text have been updated to the vocabulary that was current at the time of the Qumran settlement.
• Content—Additions, deletions, and rearrangements of the biblical text occur in some of the scrolls. For example, there are nonbiblical psalms added to biblical psalms in the Great Psalms Scroll.

While no text from the books of Nehemiah or Esther have been found in the Dead Sea Scrolls, it would be a mistake to think that ALL the rest of the verses of the Hebrew Bible have parallels in the scrolls. Many of the “scrolls” are mere fragments with just a handful of letters or a portion of a couple of lines/verses preserved. Modern textual analysis of the Hebrew Bible depends not just on the Dead Sea Scrolls to evaluate the medieval Masoretic copies, but also the many manuscripts of the Greek Septuagint, the Latin Vulgate of Jerome, as well as older Greek and Latin versions of biblical texts, and even copies in Syriac and Coptic. Confidence in the biblical text is well founded from the many manuscripts in existence.

On the two missing books, it should be noted that given that Ezra and Nehemiah form a single book in the Hebrew Bible, it may be that the book of Nehemiah was present as part of the manuscripts of Ezra found. However, no verses from Nehemiah are known currently. Arguments have also been put forward for the inclusion of Esther, pointing out that the scroll may have deteriorated completely by this point, leaving no surviving textual witnesses.

Scholars at the IAA asked this same question in 2017 as they began exploring the 500 or so caves around the Dead Sea to ensure they had not missed anything. Among dozens of small artifacts, the archaeologists did find additional fragments of a Greek scroll of the Book of the Twelve, which had been found in 1961 in the same cave. This cave, however, was not part of the Qumran settlement, but was used in the later Bar Kokhba revolt in 132–135 CE. Their work continues to reveal additional, albeit fragmentary, remains of documents.

Because of how close the scrolls align with medieval Masoretic copies of the Hebrew Bible, the Dead Sea Scrolls are not often useful for modern translations. Moreover, it is the medieval Masoretic text that became the “canonical” text of the Bible in Judaism, and which is used today in translations. However, some modern Bibles (NIV, ESV, NRSVUE) have incorporated insights from the Dead Sea Scrolls on passages that aren’t always clear in the medieval manuscripts. A couple of examples:

Example 1: 1 Samuel 1:24. Did Hannah sacrifice three bullocks or a three-year-old bull? The medieval Masoretic Text has “three bulls,” while one of the Dead Sea Scrolls of Samuel (4QSam(a)), and the Septuagint, has instead, “a three-year-old bull.” The difference comes from how one reads the consonantal text.

Example 2: Psalm 145:13–14. This psalm is an acrostic, which means that each of its verses starts with a letter of the Hebrew alphabet, moving from aleph (the first letter) to tav (the last letter). In the Masoretic Text, the verse beginning with the letter N is missing, likely from a scribal error in copying. So, the Masoretic Text has verse 13, which begins with M, and verse 14, which begins with S, but is missing the verse that begins with N (the Hebrew alphabet goes LMNS here). Since the verse is missing in the medieval Masoretic Text, in an older translation like the KJV, the verse is missing, too. However, in one of the Psalms scrolls (11QPs(a)), the verse is still there! Now, scholars can reconstruct the original psalm with each letter of the Hebrew alphabet present. The new verse is inserted in translations like the ESV, which renders it as: “The LORD is faithful in all his words and kind in all his works.”

The Dead Sea Scrolls are probably best known today as the earliest-known copies of the books of the Hebrew Bible, with the exception of Esther and Nehemiah, neither of which has been found among the scrolls. Many of the scrolls share similarities with the medieval Masoretic copies of the Hebrew Bible, which are used for the text of almost all translations of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) today. The scrolls also show similarities with other ancient translations and versions of the Hebrew Bible, such as the Greek Septuagint and the Samaritan Pentateuch. Together, the scrolls provide a look at the variety of biblical textual traditions that were in circulation in the Second Temple period, and which came to be associated with different religious communities over time.

But the importance of the scrolls extends beyond the evidence from the biblical scrolls. They provide us with a large group of texts which informs us about Second Temple Judaism—and the environment from which early Christianity emerged. They also reflect the scribal customs and practices, levels of literacy, the importance of religion, and the difficulties in interpretation for these communities. They also provide insights into the historical setting of the period, including Hasmonean as well as Roman rule, and so much more.

Above all, the Dead Sea Scrolls shed light on the state of the texts of the Hebrew Bible in the late Second Temple period. Their remarkable similarity to the medieval Masoretic Text of the Tanakh that most translations of the Old Testament use today shows the consistency of Jewish scribes in preserving Scripture over a thousand years.

The scrolls also teach us more about the different groups, or sects, that existed in Judaism during this period, which includes the time of Jesus. The sectarian scrolls discovered reveal an inside look at the thoughts and literature of the community at Qumran, which may be a group of Essenes.

Like Jews, Christians prize the biblical texts found in the Qumran caves for the witnesses they provide to the Hebrew Bible and the confidence they engender in the medieval copies upon which modern Bible translations of the Old Testament are based. The historical background they provide to Jesus’s ministry and the stories in the Gospels are also valuable for Christians and Christian history.

The Dead Sea Scrolls provide a glimpse into the different versions of the Hebrew Bible that were copied and circulated in the Second Temple period. As such, they reveal a time when the biblical text was more fluid than it is today, providing additional insight into the various ancient Jewish communities who preserved and copied “their” version of the Hebrew Bible. The non-biblical texts provide a contemporary source for this historical period. As such, they are without rival for the Second Temple period. They show some of the arguments that were current in the land of Israel regarding the temple, the priesthood, the prophecies of a messiah, and more. Our understanding of this historical period would be less without them.

Ben-Dov, Jonathan, Asaf Grayer, and Eshbal Ratzon, Material and Digital Reconstruction of Fragmentary Dead Sea Scrolls: The Case of 4Q418a (Brill, 2008).

Schiffman, Lawrence H., Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls: The History of Judaism, the Background of Christianity, the Lost Library of Qumran (The Jewish Publication Society, 1994).

Tov, Emanuel, Scribal Practices and Approaches Reflected in the Texts Found in the Judean Desert (SBL, 2009).

Tov, Emanuel, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible: Revised and Expanded, 4th ed. (Fortress Press, 2022).

VanderKam, James C., and Peter Flint, The Meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls: Their Significance for Understanding the Bible, Judaism, Jesus, and Christianity (Harper San Francisco, 2002).

VanderKam, James C., The Dead Sea Scrolls Today, 2nd ed. (Eerdmans, 2010).

Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls, Schiffman, Lawrence H., and VanderKam, James C., editors-in-chief (Oxford University Press, 2000).

The Oxford Handbook of the Dead Sea Scrolls, Lim, Timothy H., and Collins, John J., Reprint ed. (Oxford University Press, 2012).

Abegg, Martin, Flint, Peter, and Ulrich, Eugene, The Dead Sea Scrolls Bible: The Oldest Known Bible Translated for the First Time into English (HarperOne, 2002).

Martínez, Florentino García, and Tigchelaar, Eibert J. C., The Dead Sea Scrolls Study Edition, 2 vols. (Eerdmans, 2019)

Vermes, Geza, The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English, 7th ed. (Penguin Classics, 2012).

www.deadseascrolls.org.il