Dead Sea Scrolls The Dead Sea Scrolls are a group of 800-900 manuscripts found in the Qumran caves east of Jerusalem and northwest of the Dead Sea. The first scrolls were discovered in 1947 by a shepherd boy wandering into a cave looking for a lost goat. The texts are believed to have been hidden in eleven caves for safekeeping before the destruction of Rome in 70 AD. The scrolls are a collection of biblical and non-biblical documents that comprise the Hebrew Bible (all books except Esther); the Apocrypha and the Pseudepigrapha; rules for community life; biblical commentaries; a Testimony, (a collection of Bible verses about the Messiah); a war scroll; Temple Scroll; poetic and liturgical pieces; Thanksgiving Hymns; wisdom instructions; legal rulings; horoscopes and even a treasure map.1 Hailed as the archaeological find of modern times, they were made of papyrus or animal skins called gevils and written from right to left without punctuation. In fact there were no spaces between the words, they just ran together. Written in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek using ink composed of white and black carbon pigments and using bird feathers as writing instruments. Various forms of dating methods have been used, including carbon 14 tests performed on linen wrappings, paleographics, found coins and pottery, and scribals. The scrolls were dated from around 250 BC to AD 68. Coming from the late Second Temple period, the era in which Jesus lived, they are older than any other surviving biblical manuscripts. Prior to this, a document called the Nash Papyrus was the oldest biblical document dating to the 1st or 2nd century and contained the Ten Commandments. The scrolls contained copies of Isaiah that were nearly 1,000 years older than... middle of paper... August 3, 2007. “Biblical Archaeological Society”; www.bib-arch.org/deadseascrolls/bswbDSSHomePage.asp; retrieved September 16, 2007. "Cross Currents"; www.crosscurrents.org/deadsea.htm; retrieved August 21, 2007"Dead Sea Scrolls Foundation"; www.deadseascrollsfoundation.com/commentary.htm; retrieved September 16, 2007. "Info Please"; www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0193627.html; retrieved August 13, 2007.“International Bible Society”; www.ibs.org/bibles/about/12.php; retrieved September 16, 2007. "The Jewish-Roman World of Jesus"; www.religiousstudies.uncc.edu/jdtabor/dss.html; retrieved August 13, 2007. "The World of The Scrolls - Library of Congress, Washington, DC"; www.ibiblio.org/expo/deadsea.scrolls.exhibit/intro.html ; retrieved August 13, 2007. "Wikipedia"; www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_sea_scrolls; recovered on August 13 2007.