Dead Sea Scrolls

About 900 manuscripts, copied between roughly −250 and 68 and hidden in caves near Qumran by the Dead Sea, were found between 1947 and 1956. They are the oldest known copies of the Hebrew Bible, with pieces of every book except Esther, written in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek.

The Great Isaiah Scroll, over 7 meters long, matches the text read in synagogues today almost word for word, a thousand years older than any copy known before. Most of the scrolls are now kept at the Shrine of the Book in the Israel Museum, Jerusalem.