Dead Sea Scrolls Ancient religious parchment scrolls containing some Old Testament documents, commentaries and non-Biblical material.
The Scrolls were first accidentally discovered in 1947 west of the Dead Sea at (what was then) Jordan. From 1947 to 1951 additional Scrolls were discovered. The bulk of the Scrolls were in 11 caves near Qumran.
Most scholars believe that they were written by the Essenes, a Jewish religious community at Qumran overrun by the Romans in 68 CE. Randall Price notes that the discovery was synchronous with the formation of Israel as an independent nation. (Jungians might say synchronistic.)
The discovery of the Scrolls reveals, among other things, how some scholars act more on self-interest than a supposed concern for the dissemination and development of knowledge.
After their discovery, the Scrolls were zealously hoarded by a select group of scholars. Other scholars were literally barred from seeing them. Although the papyrus on which they were written was often fragmented and required careful, informed reconstruction, many of the excluded scholars say the inner circle of researchers retained the Scrolls for a far longer period than reasonable.
Moreover, misleading press releases were issued, saying the content of the Scrolls would entirely change the way the world looks at the Bible and Christianity. Most likely these claims were born out of naive enthusiasm but perhaps also a conscious desire to sensationalize.
Although no one seems to know when the Scrolls were written, Randall Price says they “yield dates from 225 BCE to CE 68″ (Randall Price, Secrets of the Dead Sea Scrolls, Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers, 1996, p. 81).
Robert Eisenman and Michael Wise say that the procedure known as AMS Carbon 14 dating (often cited as alleged proof of an artifact’s date) “is still in its infancy, subject to multiple variables, and too uncertain to be applied with precision to the kind of materials we have before us [the Scrolls]” (Robert Eisenman and Michael Wise, The Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered, RockPort MA: Element Inc, 1992, p. 13).
Some of the Scrolls were discovered beyond the caves at Qumran. The editor-in-chief of the Scrolls Translation and Publication Team says
It is misleading to say that all of the Scrolls were written by the Qumran group, i.e. the Essenses. We now believe that many, maybe most, of the Scrolls found at Qumran were actually not written by people who dwelt at Qumran. Some scholars even believe that all of the Scrolls were written outside of Qumran without any connection to the Qumran community (Emmanuel Tov, cited in Price, p. 83).
Nevertheless, some writers like Barbara Thiering affix a specific date and location to the writing of the Scrolls in order to support their own ideas.
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