What are the Dead Sea Scrolls?
The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered by a shepherd in a cave in Israel, about 1947. They appear to be the earliest records of Jewish scripture. They were kept secret by the Jordanian and Israeli governments until about twenty years ago, when photographs of the scrolls were leaked. Now all the scrolls have been studied and translated and published in an English edition. Reasons why the scrolls were kept secret vary, but a likely explanation is that the scrolls’ contents, written by a Jewish sect after the time of Jesus Christ, may have conflicted with sections of the New Testament. The following text is contributed by Charles King: — The Dead Sea Scrolls were the product of a small Jewish sect living near the village of Qumran on the western shore of the Dead Sea around the time of Christ. The Scrolls were first discovered by a shepherd in 1947, but additional scrolls continued to be unearthed for the next ten years. As the area came under the control of Jordan after the Israeli war of
