Dead Sea Scrolls

By: Biblical Archaeology Society Staff

A recent study has sought to determine by sophisticated methods whether Khirbet Qumran was home to a community of sectarian Jews, the Essenes.

By: BAS Staff

A recent computer analysis of handwriting from the Great Isaiah Scroll—one of the longest and best preserved of the Dead Sea Scrolls—found the 54-column text was produced by two different scribes who apparently worked in shifts to complete the task.

By: Biblical Archaeology Society Staff

Do insights from the Dead Sea Scrolls add to the Masoretic text, and if so, should the original Hebrew Bible text be modified based this information? Scholars from both sides of the divide weigh in on this issue.

By: Jonathan Klawans

Followers of this blog may have heard that the 19th-century Shapira Affair[1] has resurfaced again. In just the past week, a biblical scholar at the […]

By: Glenn Corbett

The Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) announced this week that recent explorations in the Judean desert south of Jerusalem have revealed scores of new scroll fragments […]

By: Jonathan Laden

The owner of the lid thought that it was contaminated by hardened bat dung. However, the residue was from papyrus. A jar probably fell, dislodging the lid; the papyrus Dead Sea Scrolls then decomposed over the intervening centuries before modern discovery.

By: Jonathan Laden

Archaeology has been likened to solving a puzzle which is missing some–or occasionally most–of its pieces. The scholars who dedicate their lives to this pursuit […]

By: Megan Sauter

What do the Dead Sea Scrolls say about Jesus? What do they say about the world in which Jesus lived? In BAR, James C. VanderKam examines the overlap between the Dead Sea Scrolls and the New Testament.

By: Jonathan Laden

The 25,000 fragments that make up the Dead Sea Scrolls are considered by many to be the archaeological discovery of the 20th century. They were […]

By: Jonathan Laden

Rare Coin from Bar Kokhba Revolt Discovered in Jerusalem