The Dead Sea Scrolls: Discovery and Impact

In 1947 a Bedouin shepherd threw a stone into a cave at Qumran and heard pottery break. Inside were scrolls in jars.

By 1956, eleven caves yielded about 930 manuscripts: every book of the Hebrew Bible except Esther, plus community rules, commentaries, and apocalypses. The scrolls pushed the oldest biblical texts back a thousand years and showed how faithfully scribes transmitted scripture.

They are now digitized online by the Israel Museum..