Definitions for "Dead Sea Scrolls"
Old Testament scrolls written by Jewish Essenes in a male-only sect near Qumran sometime around 200-68 B.C.; they were stored in clay jars and hidden in caves in the Judean desert near the Dead Sea where a young Bedouin found them in 1947 while looking for a lost goat; the scrolls found were 1000 years older than the earliest existing copies, including all the books of the Bible except Estar as well as Enochian literature
A number of scrolls discoverd at various times since 1947, in caves near the Dead Sea, dating between 100 B.C. and A.D. 70 and containing Jewish Scriptual writings and religious writings from an Essenelike community.
In 1947 an Arab shepherd boy discovered manuscripts (which pre-dated Christ. Many of these manuscripts were of the Old Testament, apocryphal material, and records of the Essene community.
Primary documents of ancient Judaism recovered in the 1940â€(tm)s.