The Scrolls were discovered not by the Bedouin boy, as everyone says, but in the Cairo Genizah in the 1860s and on. In 1947, the Bedouin boy discovered the “first” seven scrolls. Prof. Lawrence H. Schiffman, New York University
The media assumed that the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls would solve problems related to Christianity, but the Scrolls are actually biblical and Second Temple Jewish texts. Prof. Lawrence H. Schiffman, New York University
The Dead Sea Scrolls were not discovered all at once in 1947. We have several accounts from antiquity and the Middle Ages about scrolls discovered in the region of Jericho. These previously discovered scrolls may have reached certain circles that influenced Karaism, a medieval Jewish sectarian movement that has certain parallels to the Dead Sea […]
After a quarter century of discovery and publication, the study of the manuscripts from the desert of Judah has entered a new, more mature phase. True, the heat and noise of the early controversies have not wholly dissipated. One occasionally hears the agonized cry of a scholar pinned beneath a collapsed theory. And in the […]
Letter from archaeologist Yigael Yadin, ex-Chief of Staff of the IDF informing Teddy Kollek in the Prime Minister’s Office that he had completed the purchase of some of the Dead Sea Scrolls in New York, end of 1954. Israel Museum
Overview Overview- Discovery and Acquisition Primary sources The Bible Scholar Who Became an Undercover Agent, Harry M. Orlinsky, Biblical Archaeology Review (18:4), Jul/Aug. 1992. Secondary sources Discovery and Acquisition, 1947–1956, Lawrence H. Schiffman, Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls, Jewish Publication Society, Philadelphia, 1994. Early Publication Efforts, 1953–1967, Lawrence H. Schiffman, Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls, […]
In 1954, the Syrian Metropolitan was still in possession of four large manuscripts. He was unwilling to sell to Israel for political reasons, but had been unable to attract a high enough price elsewhere. In desperation, he placed an advertisement in the Wall Street Journal on June 1, in which he suggested that the […]
In early 1947 (or late 1946) an Arab shepherd searching for a lost sheep threw a rock into a cave in the limestone cliffs on the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea. Instead of a bleating sheep, he heard the sound of breaking pottery. When he investigated, he found seven nearly intact ancient documents that […]
Israel’s most celebrated Biblical archaeologist, Yigael Yadin, died of a heart attack on Jun 28 at the age of 67. The world of Biblical archaeology has been impoverished. Yadin was struck down at his weekend home in Michmoret on the Mediterranean Sea, suddenly and without warning. All Israel mourned. The general-archaeologist who had led Israel’s […]
The largest collection of texts was found in this cave, which yielded fragments of some 550 manuscripts. The cave served as a library for the inhabitants of Qumran, and was filled with wooden shelves. This cave was artificially hollowed out of the limestone. It is located immediately opposite Qumran, and is the most accessible cave […]