What Are the Dead Sea Scrolls?

The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in the mid-twentieth century in caves near Qumran, northwest of the Dead Sea. They range from small fragments to lengthy, well-preserved documents, often in multiple copies. The texts themselves suggest that they were written by members of a group that withdrew from Jerusalem to the northwestern corner of the Dead Sea, likely in rejection of the authority of Hasmonean Temple administrators. Most scholars identify the community to which the scrolls belonged as an extreme subset of the Essene movement.

Qumran scholars distinguish between “sectarian” texts, which reflect the distinctive beliefs and practices of the Qumran community, and “nonsectarian” texts, which were preserved and copied by members of the sect but were not necessarily composed by them. The sectarian texts include liturgies, psalms, hymns, visions of the imminent end of days, biblical commentaries (called pesharim) that interpreted prophetic texts as referring to the history of the sect, polemics against other sects and against the Jerusalem establishment, and instructional guides for life in a sectarian community. The non-sectarian texts include biblical manuscripts, some of which differ from the Masoretic Text used by Jewish communities today, and other Jewish writings in a variety of genres. Some of this literature, such as the books of Jubilees and Enoch, were previously known due to their preservation by Christian communities (often in translation), while others were entirely unknown until the discovery of the scrolls.