Dead Sea Scrolls

 

The Dead Sea Scrolls are a collection of 972 texts discovered between 1946 and 1956 that consist of Biblical Manuscripts from what is now known as the Hebrew Bible and extra-biblical documents found on the northwest shore of the Dead sea, from which they derive their name. They were specifically located at Khirbet Qumran in what was then British Modern Palestine, and since 1947, what has been known as the West Bank.
The texts are of great historical and religious significance and include the earliest known surviving copies of biblical and extra-biblical documents, as well as preserving evidence of great diversity in late Second Temple Judaism. They are written in Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, and Nabatean, mostly on parchment, but with some written on Papyrusand bronze. These manuscripts have been dated to various ranges between 408 BCE and 318 CE. Bronze coins found on the site form a series beginning with Hyrcanus I(135-104 BCE) and continue without a gap until the First Jewish Revolt (66–73 CE). The scrolls are traditionally identified with the ancient Jewish sect called the Essenes, though some recent interpretations have challenged this association and argue that the scrolls were penned by priests in Jerusalem, zadokites, or other unknown Jewish groups.