Online: The Dead Sea Scrolls, with Toni McKeen

The Dead Scrolls: what were they, who wrote them and what do they mean?

The Dead Sea Scrolls are ancient manuscripts that were discovered between 1947 and 1956 in eleven caves near Khirbet Qumran, on the northwestern shores of the Dead Sea.

They are approximately two thousand years old, dating from the third century BCE to the first century CE. Most of the scrolls were written in Hebrew, with a smaller number in Aramaic or Greek. The vast majority of the scrolls survived as fragments - only a handful were found intact. Nevertheless, scholars have managed to reconstruct from these fragments approximately 950 different manuscripts of various lengths.

The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls represents a turning point in the study of the history of the Jewish people in ancient times. Thanks to these remarkable finds, our knowledge of Jewish society in the Land of Israel during the Hellenistic and Roman periods as well as the origins of rabbinical Judaism and early Christianity has been greatly enriched.

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