Between 1947 and 1956 thousands of remains of biblical and early Jewish documents were discovered in eleven caves near the site of Khirbet Qumran on the shores of the Dead Sea. These important texts have revolutionized our understanding of the way the Bible was transmitted, and have illuminated the general cultural and religious background of ancient Palestine, out of which both Rabbinic Judaism and Christianity arose.
In the spring of 1947 Bedouin goat herds, searching the cliffs along the Dead Sea for a lost goat, came upon a cave containing jars filled with manuscripts. That find caused a sensation when it was released to the world, and continues to interest the scholarly community and the public to this day. The first discoveries came to the attention of scholars in 1948, when seven of the scrolls were sold by the Bedouin to a cobbler and antiquities dealer called Kando.
The scrolls are a collection of biblical and non biblical documents comprising of the Hebrew Bible, the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha; rules for community life; biblical commentaries; a Testimonial,a collection of verses from the Bible about the Messiah; a War Scroll; Temple Scroll; poetic and liturgical pieces; Thanksgiving Hymns; wisdom instructions; legal rulings; horoscopes and even a treasure map.
The Dead Sea is located in Israel and Jordan, east of Jerusalem. The dead sea is very deep, salty, and it's the lowest body of water in the world. Because the dead sea is at such a low elevation, the climate has a high evaporation rate but a very low humidity which helped to preserve the scrolls. Archaeologists searched for the home of the people that may have left the scrolls in the caves. The archaeologists excavated a ruin locat ...