Friday, March 26, 2010

Cave where Dead Sea Scrolls were found

Photo: the Dead Sea Scrolls were found in this cave in Qumran in the West Bank near Dead Sea in Israel.

According to Wikipedia ‘the Dead Sea Scrolls are a collection of about 900 documents, including texts from the Hebrew Bible, discovered between 1947 and 1956 in eleven caves in and around the ruins of the ancient settlement of Khirbet Qumran on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea in Israel.’

These include the oldest known surviving copies of Biblical and other documents of great religious and historical significance, written in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek on parchment and papyrus. These manuscripts date between 150 BC and 70 AD. The scrolls are identified with the ancient Jewish sect Essenes, though some recent interpretations have challenged this association and some scholars argue that the scrolls were written by priests, Zadokites, or other unknown Jewish groups. Click on the photo to enlarge it. You can use it as a wallpaper (size: 1600x1200 pixels) on your computer or post it in your blog! Read more on the Dead Sea Scrolls.

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