![]() 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. 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 Zadokites, or other unknown Jewish groups wrote the scrolls. The caves are located about 1.5 kilometres (1 mi) west of the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea, whence they derive their name. Researchers have assembled a collection of 981 different manuscripts (discovered in 1946/1947 and in 1956) from 11 caves, which lie in the immediate vicinity of the Hellenistic Jewish settlement at the site of Khirbet Qumran in the eastern Judaean Desert, in the West Bank. However, a small number of well-preserved and near-intact manuscripts have survived - fewer than a dozen among those from the Qumran Caves. ![]() 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. Many thousands of written fragments have been discovered in the Dead Sea area. 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 1967 Arab–Israeli War - whilst Israel's claims are primarily based on historical and religious grounds, given their significance in Jewish history and in the heritage of Judaism. Almost all of the 15,000 scrolls and scroll fragments are held in the Shrine of the Book at the Israel Museum, located in the city of Jerusalem. At the same time, they cast new light on the emergence of Christianity and of Rabbinic Judaism. ![]() Dating from the 3rd century BCE to the 1st century CE, the Dead Sea Scrolls are considered to be a keystone in the history of archaeology with great historical, religious, and linguistic significance because they include the oldest surviving manuscripts of entire books later included in the biblical canons, along with extra-biblical and deuterocanonical manuscripts that preserve evidence of the diversity of religious thought in late Second Temple Judaism. They were discovered over a period of 10 years, between 19, at the Qumran Caves near Ein Feshkha in the West Bank, on the northern shore of the Dead Sea. The Dead Sea Scrolls, also called the Qumran Caves Scrolls, are a set of ancient Jewish manuscripts from the Second Temple period.
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