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Qumran....
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Scrolls from the Dead Sea |
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In 1947, young Bedouin shepherds, searching for a stray goat in the
Judean Desert, entered a long-untouched cave and found jars filled with ancient scrolls. That initial discovery by the
Bedouins yielded seven scrolls and began a search that lasted nearly a decade and eventually produced thousands of scroll fragments from eleven caves. |
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During those same years, archaeologists searching for a habitation close to the caves that might help identify the people who deposited the scrolls, excavated the
Qumran ruin, a complex of structures located on a barren terrace between the cliffs where the caves are found and the
Dead Sea. Within a fairly short time after their discovery, historical, paleographic, and linguistic evidence, as well as carbon-14 dating, established that the scrolls and the Qumran ruin dated from the third century B.C.E. to 68 C.E. They were indeed ancient! Coming from the late
Second Temple Period, a time when
Jesus of Nazareth lived, they are older than any other surviving biblical manuscripts by almost one thousand years. |
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In 1955, three intact ceramic vessels containing a total of 561 silver coins were found under a doorway at the Qumran excavation site. The vessels were filled to the brim with coins and their mouths were covered with palm-fiber stoppers. On the other hand it should be noted that depositing coins at a building's foundation, often under doorways, was a common practice in antiquity. |
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24 silver coins. Between 136/135 B.C.E. |
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Since their discovery nearly half a century ago, the scrolls and the identity of the nearby settlement have been the object of great scholarly and public interest, as well as heated debate and controversy. Why were the scrolls hidden in the caves? Who placed them there? Who lived in Qumran? Were its inhabitants responsible for the scrolls and their presence in the caves? Of what significance are the scrolls to Judaism and
Christianity? |
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