In 1947, young Bedouin shepherds, searching for a stray goat in the Judean Desert, entered a long-untouched cave and found jars filled with ancient scrolls. That initial discovery by the Bedouins yielded seven scrolls and began a search that lasted nearly a decade and eventually produced thousands of scroll fragments from eleven caves.

Area where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found


Cave #4


During those same years, archaeologists searching for a habitation close to the caves that might help identify the people who deposited the scrolls, excavated the Qumran ruin, a complex of structures located on a barren terrace between the cliffs where the caves are found and the Dead Sea, which is is located in Israel and Jordan, about 15 miles east of Jerusalem and is 1300 feet below sea level.

Within a fairly short time after their discovery, historical, paleographic, and linguistic evidence, as well as carbon-14 dating, established that the scrolls and the Qumran ruin dated from the third century B.C.E. to 68 C.E. They were indeed ancient! Coming from the late Second Temple Period, a time when Jesus of Nazareth lived, they are older than any other surviving biblical manuscripts by almost one thousand years.

Since their discovery nearly half a century ago, the scrolls and the identity of the nearby settlement have been the object of great scholarly and public interest, as well as heated debate and controversy.

While other scrolls have been discovered since, in caves all along the Dead Sea, the scrolls at Qumran are by far the most important as far as Christians are concerned because they are the only ones throughout the Dead Sea region that pre-date or are contemporary with Jesus Christ.

They are, in fact, the only original writings of Hebrew scripture known to exist that are as old or older than Jesus and John the Baptist. All the other Dead Sea Scrolls are later works which bear the trademark of the Jewish Rabbinical School at Jamnia.

These were written well after Christianity had converted great numbers of followers throughout Judea, the Roman Empire, Greece and the lands around the Mediterranean Sea.

Unlike the scrolls at Qumran, the later scrolls were written after the Romans had destroyed Herod's temple in Jerusalem and had either killed or taken into Roman slavery millions of Jewish citizens. Because these later Dead Sea Scrolls were all penned after these shattering events had taken place, one cannot be certain that they were not written with an eye to counter and block the events and teachings that were swirling about them at the time.

The scrolls at Qumran, however, because they were written before any of these events occurred, give us an unbiased picture of the original state of Jewish scripture at the time of Jesus Christ.

They show us, for instance, that there was not just one rescension of the Hebrew scripture being used at the time of Christ. There were dozens. They show us that the Greek (Septuagint) Old Testament was used extensively in Judea, and without the onus that it later received from the Rabbinical scholars.

It is for these reasons, and especially because the Qumran scrolls are the oldest known copies of Jewish scripture in existance, that Qumran and the sect that produced these scrolls are so vital to the study of Judaism and Christianity.


This impressive scroll is a collection of psalms and hymns, comprising parts of forty-one biblical psalms.



Decoding the Dead Sea Scrolls

Scientists use digital methods to rediscover missing texts

Using a process that substracts colors to heighten contrast reveals a hidden line of writing in what appears to be a blank space on the Temple Scroll, obe of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

August 11, 1999 - MSNBC

Inscribed near the time of Jesus, stored in caves for two millennian, and found in caves in 1947, a wrinkled scrap of leather stored in Teaneck, N.J., hid the key to an ancient psalm. The Dead Sea Scroll fragment was almost more holy relic than historical artifact before archaeologist Richard Johnston and his fellow researchers came along. using a digital camera and computer-driven analysis, Johnston's team did what is becoming increasing commomplace. They made the ancient document speak.

Out of a blackened patch emerged several lines, among them, Blessed is the Lord who causes us to rejoice, for that is why you created us.

"The characters popped right out. To be able to see writing that had not been seen for over 2,000 years was very exciting," says the Rev. John Peter Meno of St. Mark's Cathedral in Teaneck. Meno is general secretary of the Eastern United States archdiocese of the Syrian Orthodox Church, which owns the fragment.

The find eventually yielded what is being called a harvest hymn, a never-before-seen Jewish psalm.

Johnston and his colleagues have been pioneering ways to use imaging technologies once reserved for spies and astronomers to mine the secrets of ancient texts blackened or faded by time.

The team, sponsored by Eastman Kodak Co. and Xerox Corp., has been experimenting with multispectral imaging at the Rochester (N.Y.) Institute of Technology's Chester F. Carlson Center for Imaging Sciences, of which Johnston is dean.

he imaging techniques were developed to enable spy satellites to identify, for example, an army tank hidden by fog or a jungle canopy. In the case of ancient texts, it helps researchers differentiate between ink and background by detecting minute differences in the light waves (or spectra) they reflect.

Light visible to the naked eye has wavelengths in the range of 400 to 700 nanometers, or billionths of a meter. Using a digital camera sensitive to light ranging from 200 nanometers (ultraviolet) to 1,100 nanometers (infrared), the researchers photograph documents in light of several different wavelengths until they find the ones that offer the most detail. Ink may reflect light at, say, 900 nanometers, while the blackened leather in the background might reflect at 910 nanometers. A computer, analyzing the differences, can identify hidden characters.

Typically, Johnston's team extracts only tiny, though crucial, nuggets.

Looking at a rare red-ink scroll of the Old Testament Book of Samuel yielded only one previously unknown character. Still, the scholar involved was so thrilled that he went out and wrote whole papers on it. They work was done t Xerox's Digital Imaging Technology center in Webster, N.Y.

Among the thoroughly mined texts of the Dead Sea Scrolls, they found only 18 new characters in their examination of color photos of the Temple Scroll - which at 28 feet is the longest mostly intact scroll.

So the harvest hymn find, on a scrap of liturgical scroll, was a virtual mother lode. When combined with other scroll fragments and translated by professor George J. Brooke of the University of Manchester in England, it read The Festival of our Peace. The fruit became plump due to the Heavens and the produce of the Earth of living things, so we give thanks to your name, forever. Blessed is the Lord who causes us to rejoice, for that is why You created us.

The Dead Sea Scrolls were written in the Semitic language of Aramaic between 250 B.C. and A.D. 68 and hidden in caves near Qumran, which some scholars think was an ancient Jewish settlement. The writings shed light on aspects of early Jewish religious and secular life during the era when Romans sacked Jerusalem, around A.D. 70, and as Christianity was dawning.

"These things are so fragile, they can just crumble at a touch," Meno says. "The amazing thing about this technology is it allows us to literally see through it to other layers of writing without ever touching these very fragile artifacts."

The Dead Sea Scrolls are only the beginning. Johnston next hopes to image a 10th-century copy of the works of the Greek mathematician Archimedes. The text was washed off its leather pages in the 12th century and overwritten with stories of Christian saints, a common practice in those times, Johnston says.

The group did some initial imaging work on the text when it was auctioned by Christie's of London, and in July they submitted to its new owners a proposal to try to uncover the entire document. Now, however, they have competition.

"Since I got started in the early 1990s, there has been a boom in imaging science,"Johnston says.

When the team began its work, Kodak made it possible by donating a nearly one-of-a-kind digital camera originally custom-made for a government agency. Xerox pitched in expensive Unix workstation computers and highly technical imaging software.

Five years ago, even three years ago, the number of places that could do this was very small," says Roger Easton, another team member. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., was one of the few shops that could match the Rochester group's technology and know-how.

Today, archaeologists take $700 infrared-capable consumer video cameras and laptop computers into the field to record and analyze finds as they are unearthed, Easton says. The detail is nearly as good as with the Rochester equipment, nor the analysis so sophisticated, but it's getting better all the time.

Easton recently purchased a digital camera nearly as capable as the group's own for about $20,000. It won't be long until they can do this themselves,he says. All you need is a capable notebook (computer) and a spectral camera and for $30,000 you're in business. The Rochester team has filed three patents, and Xerox hopes to commercialize its technology in systems aimed not at archaeologists but government and big corporations.

"Think of all the documents out there that companies would like to get digitized and into their systems, The federal government alone over the coming years is set to release millions of pages of documents under the Freedom of Information Act, many of which were printed on (heat sensitive) thermal fax paper and now appear completely black. We're looking to commercialize systems that can automate the process," Knox says.



FACTS ABOUT THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS

  • The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in eleven caves along the northwest shore of the Dead Sea between the years 1947 and 1956. The area is 13 miles east of Jerusalem and is 1300 feet below sea level. The mostly fragmented texts, are numbered according to the cave that they came out of. They have been called the greatest manuscript discovery of modern times.

  • Only Caves 1 and 11 have produced relatively intact manuscripts. Discovered in 1952, Cave 4 produced the largest find. About 15,000 fragments from more than 500 manuscripts were found.

  • In all, scholars have identified the remains of about 825 to 870 separate scrolls.

  • The Scrolls can be divided into two categories - biblical and non-biblical. Fragments of every book of the Hebrew canon (Old Testament) have been discovered except for the book of Esther.

  • There are now identified among the scrolls, 19 copies of the Book of Isaiah, 25 copies of Deuteronomy and 30 copies of the Psalms .

  • Prophecies by Ezekiel, Jeremiah and Daniel not found in the Bible are written in the Scrolls.

  • The Isaiah Scroll, found relatively intact, is 1000 years older than any previously known copy of Isaiah. In fact, the scrolls are the oldest group of Old Testament manuscripts ever found.

    Some of the scrolls found by Bedouin shepherds in 1947 were discovered in cylindrical pottery jars of this type, which are unknown elsewhere. Many authorities consider the discovery of these unique vessels in the Qumran excavations as well as in the caves, as convincing evidence of the link between the settlement and the caves. These jars, like the other pottery vessels recovered at Qumran, were probably manufactured locally.

  • In the Scrolls are found never before seen psalms attributed to King David and Joshua.

  • There are nonbiblical writings along the order of commentaries on the OT, paraphrases that expand on the Law, rule books of the community, war conduct, thanksgiving psalms, hymnic compositions, benedictions, liturgical texts, and sapiential (wisdom) writings.

  • The Scrolls are for the most part, written in Hebrew, but there are many written in Aramaic. Aramaic was the common language of the Jews of Palestine for the last two centuries B.C. and of the first two centuries A.D. The discovery of the Scrolls has greatly enhanced our  knowledge of these two languages. In addition, there are a few texts written in Greek.

  • The Scrolls appear to be the library of a Jewish sect. The library was hidden away in caves around the outbreak of the First Jewish Revolt (A.D. 66-70) as the Roman army advanced against the rebel Jews.

  • Near the caves are the ancient ruins of Qumran. They were excavated in the early 1950's and appear to be connected with the scrolls.

  • The Dead Sea Scrolls were most likely written by the Essenes during the period from about 200 B.C. to 68 C.E./A.D. The Essenes are mentioned by Josephus and in a few other sources, but not in the New testament. The Essenes were a strict Torah observant, Messianic, apocalyptic, baptist, wilderness, new covenant Jewish sect. They were led by a priest they called the "Teacher of Righteousness," who was opposed and possibly killed by the establishment priesthood in Jerusalem.

  • The enemies of the Qumran community were called the "Sons of Darkness"; they called themselves the "Sons of Light," "the poor," and members of "the Way." They thought of themselves as "the holy ones," who lived in "the house of holiness," because "the Holy Spirit" dwelt with them.

  • The last words of Joseph, Judah, Levi, Naphtali, and Abraham (the father of Moses) are written down in the Scrolls.

  • One of the most curious scrolls is the Copper Scroll. Discovered in Cave 3, this scroll records a list of 64 underground hiding places throughout the land of Israel. The deposits are to contain certain amounts of gold, silver, aromatics, and manuscripts. These are believed to be treasures from the Temple at Jerusalem, that were hidden away for safekeeping.

  • The Temple Scroll, found in Cave 11, is the longest scroll. Its present total length is 26.7 feet (8.148 meters). The overall length of the scroll must have been over 28 feet (8.75m).

  • The scrolls contain previously unknown stories about biblical figures such as Enoch, Abraham, and Noah. The story of Abraham includes an explaination why God asked Abraham to sacrifice his only son Issac.

  • The scrolls are most commonly made of animal skins, but also papyrus and one of copper. They are written with a carbon-based ink, from right to left, using no punctuation except for an occasional paragraph indentation. In fact, in some cases, there are not even spaces between the words.

  • The Scrolls have revolutionized textual criticism of the Old Testament. Interestingly, now with manuscripts predating the medieval period, we find these texts in substantial agreement with the Masoretic text as well as widely varient forms.

  • Some of the Dead Sea Scrolls actually appeared for sale on June 1, 1954 in the Wall Street Journal. The advertisement read � "The Four Dead Sea Scrolls: Biblical manuscripts dating back to at least 200 BC are for sale. This would be an ideal gift to an educational or religious institution by an individual or group. Box F206."

  • Although the Qumran community existed during the time of the ministry of Jesus, none of the Scrolls refer to Him, nor do they mention any of His follower's described in the New Testament.

  • The major intact texts, from Caves 1 & 11, were published by the late fifties and are now housed in the Shrine of the Book museum in Jerusalem.

  • Since the late fifties, about 40% of the Scrolls, mostly fragments from Cave 4, remained unpublished and were unaccessible. It wasn't until 1991, 44 years after the discovery of the first Scroll, after the pressure for publication mounted, that general access was made available to photographs of the Scrolls. In the November of 1991 the photos were published by the Biblical Archaeological Society in a nonofficial edition; a computer reconstruction, based on a concordance, was announced; the Huntington Library pledged to open their microfilm files of all the scroll photographs.

  • The Dead Sea Scrolls enhance our knowledge of both Judaism and Christianity. They represent a non-rabbinic form of Judaism and provide a wealth of comparative material for New Testament scholars, including many important parallels to the Jesus movement. They show Christianity to be rooted in Judaism and have been called the evolutionary link between the two.



    THE ANGEL SCROLL

    September 29, 1999 - AP - Jerusalem

    A religious text that has mysteriously surfaced in Israel and is being billed as one of the "lost" Dead Sea Scrolls uses some of the same phrases and imagery as the other 2000-year-old writings, a scholar said Monday after studying excerpts.

    But it's too soon to say whether the "Angel Scroll," which describes a believer's trip through the heavens, is a major find that will shed new light on Jewish mysticism and the origins of Christianity, or an elaborate hoax, said Stephen Pfann, president of the University of the Holy Land.

    The story of the Angel Scroll is shrouded in mystery. Rumors have circulated for years among scholars in the Holy Land that one of the scrolls - the religious writings of the Essenes found in caves near the Dead Sea between 1947 and 1954 - made its way to an antiquities dealer in one of the nearby Arab capitals.



    THE ESSENES

    A widely held theory is that Qumran was inhabited by the Hebrew sect called the Essenes. This was an ascetic Jewish religious community that existed in Palestine at the time the occupation of the Qumran site flourished, and which was both contemporary with and pre-dated John the Baptist, Jesus of Nazareth and the Roman destruction of the Jerusalem temple in 70 A.D.

    The Essenes must have been quite important during these times because information concerning them in the ancient literature is more prevalent than for the other two major Jewish sects, the Pharisees and the Sadducees.

    The Essenes thrived in a country and at a time that saw the laws of Moses adapted to fit a wide range of philosophies. Jewish, Persian, Iranian and Hellenistic thoughts apparently competed with one another in a quagmire of Messianic fervor, banditry and zealous terrorism.



    EDGAR CAYCE

    Recorded history of the Essenes begins around 200 BC and ends around 100 AD. The information channeled by Edgar Cayce tells us that Mary, Joseph, John the Baptist, the innkeeper at Bethlehem and Jesus himself were all Essenes. Cayce had correctly identified the location of the Essene community eleven years before the scrolls were discovered. Cayce said that only a fraction of the Essenes lived in a discovered monastry. Thousands lived normal lives throughout the Middle East. They were bound together by the conviction that a messiah would be born within their ranks.

    Cayce said that the head of the Essenes, called Judy, was incarnated in the twentieth century and came to him for a reading. Among her many functions was recordkeeper of the Essene material.

    Cayce said that there were sects within the Essene movement itself. The philosophical dividing point seemed to be whether man could make things happen or whether only God could make things happen.



    The Essene Brotherhood By Joshua David Stone

    The Essene brotherhood had its inception at the time of Melchizedek, the great spiritual master who lived on this planet around 1973 B. C. and was the incarnation of Jesus. Thus Jesus actually began the Essene's movement, as well as facilitating the start of the Jewish religion through Abraham and beginning the Christian religion himself with the help of Lord maitreya.

    The development of the Essene brotherhood over the next two thousand years is embodied in the develkopment of the jewish religion. The Essenes werer a Jewish sect representing an esoteric aspect of Jusaism, or Jewish mysticism. The jewihs mystics studied the Kabbalah, which taught belief in reincarnation, astrology, channeling, prophecy, soul travel, psychic development, and angels, and which organized itself around the Tree of Life.

    The history of the Essene brotherhood can be traced by looking at the development of the Jewish religion. It begins at the time of Melchizedek and the establishment of the Order of Melchizedek. It combines with Abraham (El Morya). It continues through Jacob (the story of Jacob's ladder and of his wrestling with the angel). It continues through Joseph, an incarnation of Jesus, and his coat of many colors, his jealous brothers, and his eventually becoming the dream interpreter of the Pharaoh.

    It continues through the great spiritual master Moses, who led the Jewish people out of bondage in Egypt and spoke to God in the burning bush at Mount sanai, which was a direct revelation of the Godhead.

    Moses was given the Ten Commandments--which are very similar to the teachings that Melchizedek (Jesus) gave to Abraham. Upon Moses' death when he ascended, Joshua, an incarnation of Jesus, took over and led the Jewish people into the Promised Land.

    The Essene, Jewish, Melchizedek, and Christian lineages are, in truth, one lineage which sets the stage for spiritual teachings for humankind.

    Moses brought forth the law. Buddha, five hundred years earlier had brought forth the wisdom of God. Jesus and Lord Maitreya carried forth the law of Moses and the wisdom of Buddha and added the love principle.

    Jesus was a Jewish rabbi who had purposely incarnated into a Jewish family that was involved with the Essenes. Jesus was the Messiah the Jewish people were waiting for, but it was only the Essenes who recognized that.

    The Essenes were opposed to taking oaths. They simply said "yes" or "no" in common conversation.

    They had a great understanding of Astrology. One of the scrolls describes the influence of the heavenly bodies on the physical and spiritual characteristics of those in certain sections of the zodiac.

    The Essenes were somethimes referred to as the "silent ones" because of their silence during morning rituals.

    The Essenes believed in Baptism.

    They believed in tithing.

    Some were celibate, others were householders with families.

    The principle teacher for the Essenes was the rabban, or rabboni, which means master. The rabban's assistant was the rabbi, or teacher. The rabbi was assisted by the rab, or assistant teacher.

    The Dead Sea Scrolls established the fact that they revered The Book of Enoch (as differientiated from the Keys of Enoch).

    In order to preserve their sacred records from the Romans and other profane groups, the Essenes hid such records in caves and crypts, and inside pottery jars especially made for this purpose.

    It is scrolls such as these that were found in 1947 near the Dead Sea. Two of these scrolls were called, The Manual of Discipline and The War of the Sons of Light with the Sons of Darkness.

    One called The Copper Scroll listed the material possessions of the Essenes.

    The Essenes were loosely divided into two groups:

    1. Practicai: Practitioners--focused on physical survival--pottery, clothing, pottery, carpentry

    2. Therapeutici: the healers--three categories: Master Herbalists--herbs, roots, leaves, bark Stone healings--clay Spiritual energy--using spiritual energies of the soul, monad, God

    The Essenes taught that the physical body was the temple of the soul.

    The Essenes were attuned to the angels. They developed the field of Angelology. They developed a sort of tree of life that represented fourteen positive angelic forces. They were expert Kabbalists.

    
    
    Seven of the angels were of a heavenly nature:
    Heavenly Father
    Angel of Eternal Life
    Angel of Peace
    Angel of Love
    Angel of Wisodm
    Angel of Power
    Angels of Creative Work
    
    Seven of a  more earthly nature:
    Earthly Mother
    Angel of Earth
    Angel of Life
    Angel of Joy 
    Angel of Sun
    Angel of Life
    Angel of Air
    
    The tree of life had seven branches reaching toward the heaven and 
    seven roots reaching into the earth.  Man was seen sitting in a sort 
    of lotus posture half way  between Heaven and earth. The esoteric 
    significance of the number seven was acknowledged clearly.  
    
    Their tree of life seems to follow the premise:
    "As is above--so is below".
    
    
    
    In recognition of the inherent value of The Dead Sea Scrolls as cultural and religious artifacts that Johnson Reprint Corporation, in collaboration with Kodansha Ltd., has undertaken a unique publishing project: To make the Scrolls, now visible only under glass in the Shrine of the Book in Jerusalem, available in their original format to people the world over, and to afford those who wish to read and study them the opportunity to do so in their own homes. In light of this, Johnson Reprint Corporation determined to reproduce the Scrolls as faithfully and accurately as the technology available to us now permits.



    THE WRITINGS OF PHILO

    In 20 A.D., Philo, the Jewish philosopher wrote of a Jewish sect numbering about 4,000 whom he called Essaie because of their saintliness. He wrote that they were worshippers of god who did not practice animalistic sacrifices. They had no slaves as all humans were equal. Moral philosophy and ethics were their chief preoccupations. The seventh day was their sabbath. They taught piety, holiness, justice, and the art of regulating home and city, but the essence of their teachings was love of God, virtue, and love of humankind. They were indifferent to money, wordly possesions and pleasure.



    THE WORDS OF JOSEPHUS
    Josephus writing around 80 A.D. said that the Essenes were Jews by birth but semed to have a greater affection for one another than they did for the Pharisees and Sadducees. Their piety toward God was extraordinary. They wore chitw garments. They used no profanity. They were ministers of peace. They spend a great deal of time studying the writings of the ancients.

    To become an Essene there was a period of preparation and purification that extended over three years. First the candidate (male or female) was required to turn over all property to the common treasury. The candidate was then the ordinances and rules, a spade, an apron, and a white robe. After year of probation the candidate was allowed to enter the second stage during which he enjoyed loser fellowship with the other candidates and was involved in more of the ceremonies and closed rites. At this stage he could not hold office or sit at the common table.

    The candidate entering the third stage was required to take an oath never to reveal the secrets of the Essene order and to practice piety toward God, and charity toward his fellow humans. He could do no harm to his fellow man, either of his own accord or at the command of others. hw ould at no time abuse his authority or put himself above the others. Any Essene caught commiting a crime would be cast out of the society. He could now attend the secret meetings called hadoth.

    The live long lives-often beyond 100 years. When captured or tortured by the Romans they could not be made to shed a tear or flatter their tormentors. Their doctrine was that their physical bodies were corruptible, but their souls were immortal.

    Many of the Essenes were great prophets of the future and were seldom wrong in their predictions.

    They were a happy, industrious, and an optimistic people.

    They were very clean, rarely argued, and were very loving.

    They had their own panel of judges if they disobeyed the rules.

    
    
    
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