Page 4582 – Christianity Today

Fifty years after the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, evangelical scholars are using them to demonstrate the reliability of the Scriptures.View IssueSubscribeGive a GiftArchivesEverything about the Dead Sea Scrolls suggests mystery.Collected by a radical Jewish sect, perhaps Essenes, who lived monasticallyin the arid and almost lifeless Judaean wilderness, the scrolls include over800 Jewish manuscripts—many biblical—dating from as early as 250B.C. The scrolls were hidden in the caves ofQumran, on the northwest corner of the Dead Sea, so that the Roman armieswould not destroy them on their way to conquer Jerusalem. The Essenes, ofwhom we know little, expected to liberate the scrolls when their communitywas liberated by the Messiah. The Romans prevailed, however, and so the scrollsstayed hidden for almost 1,900 years. But the mysteries don’t end with thescrolls’ discovery 50 years ago, which many label the archaeological eventof the century. Since then, the scrolls have been a pawn of...