Dead sea scroll dating
29-Feb-2020 17:31
But the discovery of a twelfth cave in the Judean desert cements a longstanding belief among archaeologists that looters stole the artifacts in the mid-1900s, referencing pick ax heads found deep inside a tunnel at the new cave's rear as proof.
Hidden along the cave's walls, excavators found numerous broken jars and lids.
He decided to climb the face of the cliff himself to bring them back.
Little did Juma realize as he began his climb on that January day in 1947 that those straying goats would eventually involve him in “the greatest archaeological discovery in the twentieth century.” Such thoughts were far from his mind when he saw two small openings to one of the thousands of caves that dot those barren cliffs overlooking the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea. The unexpected cracking sound surprised him; what else could be in those remote caves but treasure?
“Probably the Dead Sea Scrolls have had the greatest Biblical impact.
They have provided Old Testament manuscripts approximately 1,000 years older than our previous oldest manuscript.
The young Ta'amireh shepherd was certainly unaware of destiny when his innocent search for a stray goat led to the fateful discovery of Hebrew scrolls in a long-untouched cave.
The Dead Sea Scrolls are a collection of nearly 1,000 manuscripts written in Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic dating back to 4th century BC.
Thousands of Dead Sea Scroll fragments, from more than 900 manuscripts, have been recovered from 11 different caves at Qumran, but only a relatively small number of those fragments were found during organized excavations.