Changes

Jump to: navigation, search

Dead Sea Scrolls

16 bytes added, 17:03, March 15, 2009
m
links
Two hundred of the scrolls were books of the Old Testament, representing every book of the Hebrew Bible except possibly Esther. In addition to the "official" Old Testament books, versions of apocryphal works not included in either the Orthodox/Catholic or Protestant Bibles, e.g., the ''Book of Jubilees'', were found.
The content of the other 600 scrolls included previously unknown Psalms; Old Testament commentaries on the books of [[Isaiah]], [[Hosea]], Nahum, and [[Habakkuk]]; apocalyptic writings; and a set of scrolls that seemed to define the laws of some unknown Jewish sect.
==Who wrote them==
Several theories exist. These include:
* The scrolls represent the library collection of an obscure sect of Essenes [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essenes], who lived in a [[monastery ]] at Qumran;
* The Qumran caves are a sort of ''genizah'' (in Hebrew, a storage area where holy books and other Hebrew writings are hidden away in a respectful manner after they are no longer usable); and
* A theory held by John Romer and Norman Golb of the University of Chicago that the scrolls were brought from Jerusalem to Qumran for safekeeping during the first Jewish Revolt around 68-70 A.D. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Jewish_Revolt]
16,951
edits

Navigation menu