Other Jewish diaspora languages. They were discovered over a period of 10 years, between and , at the Qumran Caves near Ein Feshkha in the West Bank , on the northern shore of the Dead Sea.
Dating from the 3rd century BCE to the 1st century CE, [ 1 ] the Dead Sea Scrolls include the oldest surviving manuscripts of entire books later included in the biblical canons , including deuterocanonical manuscripts from late Second Temple Judaism and extrabiblical books. At the same time, they cast new light on the emergence of Christianity and of Rabbinic Judaism. The Israeli government's custody of the Dead Sea Scrolls is disputed by Jordan and the Palestinian Authority on territorial, legal, and humanitarian grounds—they were mostly discovered following the Jordanian annexation of the West Bank and were acquired by Israel after Jordan lost the Arab—Israeli War [ 3 ] —whilst Israel's claims are primarily based on historical and religious grounds, given their significance in Jewish history and in the heritage of Judaism.
Many thousands of written fragments have been discovered in the Dead Sea area. They represent the remnants of larger manuscripts damaged by natural causes or through human interference, with the vast majority holding only small scraps of text. However, a small number of well-preserved and nearly intact manuscripts have survived—fewer than a dozen among those from the Qumran Caves. Archaeologists have long associated the scrolls with the ancient Jewish sect known as the Essenes , although some recent interpretations have challenged this connection and argue that priests in Jerusalem or other unknown Jewish groups wrote the scrolls.
Most of the manuscripts are written in Hebrew , with some written in Aramaic for example the Son of God Text ; in different regional dialects, including Nabataean and a few in Greek. Owing to the poor condition of some of the scrolls, scholars have not identified all of their texts.
The identified texts fall into three general groups:. The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in a series of 12 caves around the site originally known as Ein Feshkha near the Dead Sea in the West Bank then controlled by Jordan between and by Bedouin shepherds and a team of archaeologists. John C. Trever reconstructed the story of the scrolls from several interviews with the Bedouins.
