What are the Dead Sea Scrolls?
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The Dead Sea Scrolls were a series of ancient documents found in a cave system at Qumran on the edge of the Dead Sea (in Israel). They were first discovered in 1947.
The Dead Sea scrolls contain an almost complete copy of the Old Testament - all except the book of Esther - and include the oldest copy of the book of the prophet Isaiah. They also include other writings about the Old Testament and documents dealing with the life and times of the Qumran community which used them and preserved them.
The text of all of the Dead Sea scrolls have beeen translated into many languages, including English, and copies of them are readily available to buy.
These writings are Jewish, not Christian, in origin since they were written long before the time of Jesus. Neither Jesus nor any other New Testament character is mentioned in them at all. They are not part of the Gospel story and bear no relationship to it except in as far as they give valuable background to the jewish context in which the gospels were written. To claim that they are 'early Christian writings' as some have done (eg Dan Brown in the Da Vinci Code) is untenable.
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