The Dead Sea Scrolls: Ancient Commetaries

The Dead Sea Scrolls, as they are commonly know today, were discovered hidden in several caves of the Judean wilderness by Bedouin tribesmen in 1947. At first, the discovery unearthed seven scrolls, but after a decade of search, archaeologists, historians and researchers have found thousands of fragments in eleven caves scattered throughout the area. Who were the people who wrote these scrolls and why were the manuscripts hidden in caves through the Qumran area? The bits of leather and papyrus tell of a violent era in pre and early Christian history.

Other artifacts besides the historical scrolls have been found in these caves, but the scrolls themselves were found in earthen jars of a style known to exist at that time period. In addition, a variety of languages and paleographic evidence verifies that the scrolls and the ruins nearby date at around the third century before Christ to about 68 A.D. The scrolls, established to have come from the late Second Temple Period, are almost a thousand years older than the oldest document unearthed to date, as well as the largest grouping of documents that relate to the Bible that have been found to date. The cave located near Qumran is not the only one found to contain ancient writings. Others have been found at Wadi Murabba'at and Khirbet al-Mird.

The Dead Sea is found in Israel and Jordan, less than twenty miles from the ancient city of Jerusalem. The sea itself is deep, plunging to an average of 1,000 feet in depth. Fed from surrounding streams and the Jordan River, its waters are salty and support no life, hence its name. Because of its location, the climate around the Dead Sea area is very low in humidity, and areas around it are very dry. The Bible (Genesis 19) describes an earthquake near the Dead Sea, which has been verified by archaeological testing. Though the five cities listed in Genesis, (Zeboim, Admah, Bela, Zoar, Sodom and Gomorrah) are not now readily apparent, archaeologists and Biblical historians believe they lay deep beneath the waters of the Dead Sea. Several other archaeological sites are found within the area of the Dead Sea, among them Masada, Ein Gedi, and Qumran.

Caves are found scattered through the cliffs about five miles south of the northwest corner of the Dead Sea. Less than one and a half miles from shore, in the foothills of the Judean plateau, are found ruins named Khirbet Qumran. The ruins of the ancient city of Qumran are located on top of a cliff that overlooks the Dead Sea, two miles to the east of its northern end. This location began the starting point of what eventually became known as the Qumran Caves Expedition. A search of the area around Wadi Qumran and the region within a five-mile radius surrounding it was examined by dividing it into sections; each section assigned to a small crew of natives, archaeologist, their assistants and historians and their assistants. In all, forty caves have been found to date. In twenty-five of those, pottery of the same type found in the first discovered cave was identified. The caves lie low on a limestone cliff that rises to the west of the plateau just behind the coastal plain. At first, historians weren't sure if Qumran was a residence for a wealthy Jewish family or a small Roman fort, nor whether or not the scrolls were from a library and hidden to prevent their discovery by Roman legions.

What do the scrolls contain? From the first cave comes a wealth of documents, among them a copy of a large portion of the Book of Isaiah. Among the parchments found was a commentary on the first two chapters of the book of Habakkuk and another document called 'The Manual of Discipline'. There followed another 'Isaiah' scroll, a grouping of Psalms and a scroll titled, The War Between the Children of Light and the Children of Darkness', now more commonly known as The War Scroll.

A second cave discovered in the area contained nearly one hundred fragments of the books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Jeremiah, the Psalms and Ruth. Yet another cave was replete with manuscript scraps that have been likened to a jigsaw puzzle for scholars brave and tenacious enough to attempt to fit them together. In this cave, a total of ninety Bible manuscripts have been found, including every book in the Old Testament with the exception of Esther. Thirteen of these are from Deuteronomy, twelve from the book of Isaiah and ten from the Psalms. Numerous others are still being determined, including text believed to come from the books of Samuel. From the eleven caves, nearly four hundred manuscripts have been recovered.

These manuscripts aren't sheets of papers, bound or glued together. They're in the form of scrolls, and small ones at that, many not more than six inches wide. The pottery wherein many of the scrolls and fragments were found were examined and determined to date at the 'pre-Herodian' era, roughly from the early first century to the second century A.D.

One of the documents, the Habakkuk Commentary, measures roughly five feet in length. Due to damaging, several inches are missing, making it a mere five and one half inches wide. The text on the ancient scroll is clear and, according to those who've examined it, beautifully written. The Commentary is basically a study of the book of Habakkuk, and contains several quotes followed by an explanation of those quotes in terms of history by those who wrote it. The Manual of Discipline is comprised of two separate scrolls, but when fitted together the piece measures nearly six feet long and nine and one half inches wide. This particular scroll contains the rules and procedures of meetings of the group and the personal conduct expected of its members.

Another document called The Lamech Scroll or 'The Genesis Apocryphon' as it is otherwise known has been partially translated. Yet another is the 'War of the Sons of Light with the Sons of Darkness' scroll, more commonly known as the War Scroll. This document is nearly nine feet long and six inches wide and contains instructions for the conduct of war between the tribes of Levi, Judea and Benjamin, who are called the Sons of Light - against the Edomites, Moabites, Ammonites, the Philistines and the Greeks, who are the Sons of Darkness. Whether this references a true battle or is merely a symbolic study has not yet been determined.

Not far from the first cave and south of the edge of the Wadi Qumran valley, the Qumran ruins have since been proven to be that of a Jewish monastic community which was identified with the Essenes of ancient writings. The city was occupied from the latter part of the 2^nd century before Christ until around the First Jewish Revolt against Rome in 66-70 A.D. In another valley to the west in Wadi Murabba'at, Bedouins found more manuscript fragments dating from the Second Jewish Revolt against Rome.

In 1952, four additional caves were found in the Qumran area and excavated, yielding pieces of letters, contracts, deeds and additional manuscripts from books of the Old Testament. During the same period, yet more caves were discovered in the ruins of a Christian monastery at Khirbet Al-Mird, roughly three miles northwest of Khirbet Qumran. After this site was excavated in 1952, manuscripts from the Byzantine period were found, written in several different languages.

Among the intriguing discoveries is what has been termed 'The Copper Scrolls', found in Cave Three and so called because not only is it written on copper, but also describes large treasures and where they are stored. The copper scrolls were also successfully unrolled and subsequently studied in 1956, its age pointing to the middle of the first century A.D. It's authenticity is still under debate as to whether or not this scroll was written by someone in the Qumran community or by someone else. Part of the book of Leviticus was found within this same cave, as well as large portions of an Apocalypse of the 'New Jerusalem', a Psalms scroll and an Aramaic translation of the Biblical book of Job.

In 1991, the President of Washington D.C.'s 'Project Judaica Foundation' contacted the Library of Congress on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority and arranged for an exhibit of some of the scrolls for public viewing.

The first and second century after Christ were times of major upheaval and many early Christian communities flourished while many others died out. The more the Qumran site is studied, the more is learned of the life and lifestyle of the Jewish and early Christian period, not to mention the trials and tribulations that both were subjected to under Roman rule, and the eventual the fall of the Roman Empire. The scrolls were written in a time when faith played a major role in the everyday lives of Jews of the time, and the words written on those brittle scraps of leather still reach out in an attempt to teach and instruct two thousand years later.