Page 4 - TORCH #18 - May 2021

Israel’s New Dead Sea Scrolls
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CUFI.ORG.UK
In 1946, Bedouin shepherds unknowingly stumbled upon one of the most significant archaeological discoveries in Israel when they
revealed earlier this year that for the first time in approximately 60 years archaeological excavations have uncovered further fragments of Biblical text.
This new discovery consists of twenty- four new fragments of parchment bearing lines of Greek text from the books of Zechariah and Nahum, being radiocarbon dated to around AD 100-200. These pieces are believed to belong to a set
of parchment fragments found in the 1950s in the so-called ‘Cave of Horror’ near the west shore of the Dead Sea. The cave was given its name when 40 human skeletons were found there during earlier excavations.
The cave is flanked by gorges and
is located some 260 feet below the clifftop, meaning it can only be reached by abseiling precariously down the sheer
found seven manuscripts in ancient pottery hidden in remote caves near the Dead Sea.
These scrolls would later lead archaeologists to unearth dozens more manuscripts and hundreds of fragments hidden inside a series of caves in the Judean cliffs near the Dead Sea. The transcripts contained perfect translations of Biblical texts from around 400 BC and highlighted to the world that the words of the Bible, though copied and copied again, remained accurate throughout all this time.
The last scrolls were thought to have been discovered in 1956, but amazingly the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA)