Dead Sea Scroll

The Dead Sea Scrolls are a group of manuscripts found in caves near the Dead Sea, mainly at Qumran. Written between roughly the third century BCE and the first century CE, they include copies of biblical books, rewritten scripture, legal texts, prayers, and community rules. These writings provide direct evidence of the diversity of Jewish thought, practice, and textual tradition before the destruction of the Jerusalem temple. The scrolls are especially important because they preserve biblical texts that are older than previously known manuscripts, allowing scholars to study how scripture was copied, interpreted, and transmitted in this period and before Christian tradition.