A short history of the discovery

The Dead Sea Scrolls are a collection of ancient Jewish manuscripts found between 1947 and 1956 in eleven caves near Qumran, on the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea. The first scrolls were reportedly found by Bedouin shepherds.

Together the caves yielded fragments of roughly nine hundred manuscripts. Most are written in Hebrew, with some in Aramaic and a few in Greek, and they are generally dated from about the third century BCE to the first century CE.

What the scrolls contain

About a quarter of the manuscripts are copies of books of the Hebrew Bible, and fragments of every book except Esther have been identified. These are among the oldest surviving copies of those texts, more than a thousand years older than the medieval manuscripts that were previously the earliest known.

The rest includes other religious writings of the period and texts that describe the rules and beliefs of a community. Scholars continue to discuss who wrote and collected them, and how closely they were tied to the site of Qumran.

See them in person

The best-known display is the Shrine of the Book at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, a building designed to house the Great Isaiah Scroll and other early finds. Because the manuscripts are fragile, the museum often shows facsimiles and rotates the originals on a limited schedule.

Before planning a visit, check the museum’s official website for current opening hours and which items are on view.

See them online

Many of the scrolls have been photographed at very high resolution. The Israel Antiquities Authority publishes them in the Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library, where you can zoom in on individual fragments and read transcriptions and translations alongside the images.

Looking at the images yourself is a good way to see how much of the evidence consists of small, damaged pieces, and how much reconstruction goes into every published text.

Reading the scrolls with care

Headlines about the scrolls sometimes promise hidden revelations. The manuscripts are more valuable as evidence of how texts were copied, collected and understood in the centuries before and during the rise of early Christianity and rabbinic Judaism.

For a closer look at what the collection is and is not, read our overview, The Dead Sea Scrolls: What They Are and What They Are Not.