Dead Sea Scrolls

Faith can bring people together, it can bring comfort, and it can give perspective. For many, their faith is based in their religion, which helps guide them throughout their lives, and for others their faith and religion affects every aspect of their lives. Now imagine that the very basis of your faith and everything you have been taught your entire life could be discredited by a new discovery. It would turn your life and the lives of many others upside down. In 1947, the discovery of the Dead Seas Scrolls in a small cave near the Dead Sea almost did just that and the effects of their discovery continue to be felt even today.

Questions have been asked for centuries about whether or not the stories taught in the Old Testament are real. Before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls the oldest complete copy of the Christian Bible’s New Testament (in Greek) was the Codex Sinaiticus, which was written over 1600 years ago (http://codexsinaiticus.org/en/). The oldest, yet incomplete, copy of the Old Testament is the Codex Vaticanus believed to be from the fourth century C.E. (http://www.bible-researcher.com/codex-b.html) that is until the discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls. The Dead Sea Scrolls are now one of the oldest hidden doors to our past and can be dated back to the third century B.C.E. (http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/deadsea.html).

What new discoveries have the Dead Sea Scrolls uncovered and do they correspond with the Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus? “Between 1947 and 1956 thousands of fragments of biblical and early Jewish documents were discovered in eleven caves near the site of Khirbet Qumran on the shores of the Dead Sea. These important texts have revolutionized our understanding of the way the Bible was transmitted, and have illuminated the general cultural and religious background of ancient Palestine, out of which both Rabbinic Judaism and Christianity arose”...