Knowra Dead Sea Scrolls Dead Sea Scrolls The Dead Sea Scrolls are ancient Jewish manuscripts found mainly in caves near Qumran between 1947 and 1956. They include biblical texts, religious writings, and documents associated with a Jewish community.
Qumran : An archaeological site beside the Dead Sea, associated with caves that yielded many of the scrolls. The nearby settlement anchors the scrolls’ archaeological setting, though its relationship to the manuscripts remains debated.
Scroll : A document made by writing on a long sheet or sheets that are rolled for storage. Most of the manuscripts were originally scrolls, though some were written as folded books.
Great Isaiah Scroll : A nearly complete Hebrew manuscript of the Book of Isaiah found in Qumran Cave 1. Its substantial completeness makes it a key comparison with later copies of Isaiah.
Muhammad edh-Dhib : A Bedouin shepherd associated with the 1947 discovery of the first Dead Sea Scrolls cave. His discovery began the modern recovery of manuscripts from the Qumran caves.
Nag Hammadi library : A collection of fourth-century Coptic manuscripts discovered in Egypt, including Christian and Gnostic writings. It is a separate, much later manuscript discovery, unlike the mostly earlier Jewish Dead Sea manuscripts.
Hebrew Bible : The collection of Jewish scriptures that forms the textual foundation of Judaism and substantially overlaps with the Christian Old Testament. Biblical manuscripts among the scrolls preserve witnesses to books in this scriptural collection.
Scribal culture : The practices and institutions through which trained writers produced, copied, and transmitted texts. Scribal methods shaped the manuscripts’ handwriting, corrections, and textual variations.
Community Rule : A Qumran manuscript describing communal regulations, membership, and religious discipline. It offers unusually direct evidence for rules governing a group represented in the collection.
Qumran Caves : A group of caves near Qumran where ancient manuscripts were deposited and later discovered. These caves contained the largest and most famous concentration of the scrolls.
Masada : An ancient fortress overlooking the Dead Sea, where Jewish rebels resisted Roman forces in the first century CE. Its manuscript finds are related to the region but are not the Qumran cave collection.
Show all 29