Dead Sea Scrolls is the name generally given to the manuscripts and fragments of manuscripts discovered in caves near the northwestern end of the Dead Sea in the period between 1946 and 1956.
THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS: Uncovered and Revealed
The Crown of All Hebrew Manuscripts: The Aleppo Codex
BEFORE the discovery of the cache of Hebrew scrolls in the Dead Sea caves in 1947, aside from a few fragments, our Hebrew Old Testament manuscripts were from the late 9th to the 11th century C.E. That is but a mere thousand years ago when the original thirty-nine Hebrew Old Testament Bible books date from 2,500 to 3,500 years ago. Does this mean that prior to 1947, textual scholars and translators were uncertain about the Hebrew Bible that lies behind our English Old Testament? No, there was the most important Hebrew manuscript, which is called the Keter, the “Crown,” that originally contained all the Hebrew Scriptures, or the “Old Testament.”
Hebrew Manuscripts of the Old Testament
The largest organized collection of Hebrew Old Testament manuscripts in the world is housed in the Russian National Library ("Second Firkovitch Collection") in Saint Petersburg. Codex Leningradensis is the oldest complete manuscript of the Hebrew Bible in Hebrew. Manuscripts earlier than the 13th century are very rare.
THE BIBLE’S STORY OF SURVIVAL
THE DANGEROUS CONDITIONS: Papyrus was a material prepared in ancient Egypt from the pithy stem of a water plant, used in sheets throughout the ancient Mediterranean world for writing, and it was one of the primary materials used by Bible authors and copyists. Parchment was a thin material made from the prepared skin of an... Continue Reading →