LIFE The Dead Sea Scrolls: The Race to Solve an Ancient Mystery

By The Editors of LIFE

In the late 1940s, perhaps the greatest archeological find of modern times occurred when Bedouin shepherds unearthed mysterious scrolls in a cave near the Dead Sea, just south of Jerusalem. These documents turned out to be manuscripts-some of them biblical-reflecting the beliefs of a vanished Jewish sect that fled Jerusalem during the time of Christ. But what was the connection between the documents and the ruins of an abandoned nearby settlement known as Qumran? Like some holy, historical cross between Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Da Vinci Code, LIFE's book follows the race to unearth-and decode-the many other manuscripts hidden in the desert caves.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Life
• Release date: Feb 3, 2017
• ISBN: 9781683300243

Book preview

Shabi/Laif/Redux

INTRODUCTION

The World They Left Behind

BY J.I. BAKER

UPPA/PHOTOSHOT/ZUMA

THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS were loaded into a DC6 freighter at London’s Heathrow Airport on their way back to Amman, Jordan, in 1966, after being exhibited at the British Museum.

In 68 CE, the members of an apocalyptic Jewish sect abruptly fled the settlement of Qumran in the Dead Sea Desert, leaving their library of scrolls hidden in surrounding caves. Why? We can’t be sure—they may have been fleeing marauding Romans—but nearly 2,000 years later the scrolls were unearthed after a Bedouin shepherd threw a rock into one of the caves. The greatest archaeological discovery of modern times had begun—and so had the bizarre odyssey of the scrolls.

Over time, the priceless scrolls and fragments were hung on wash lines, buried in backyards, illegally peddled in Jerusalem markets, shipped in luggage to New Jersey, put up for sale in the Wall Street Journal, flown on DC6s, sealed in Beirut vaults, hidden under floorboards, damaged by mold, and simply forgotten between pages of books. Some of the jars the scrolls were found in ended up as water containers in Bethlehem! Many treasures likely fell into private hands—or were lost forever.

Even the scrolls we know about are often inscrutable, with much information (including a key to elusive buried treasure) written in code, or using terms that we can’t understand. Still, they provide enough information to suggest that the sect at Qumran was the Essenes (a theory accepted by most mainstream scholars and reflected throughout this book). Believing that other Jews had lost their way, the Essenes expected to survive the imminent end of the world in a war between the Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness.

That war never arrived, but the Romans probably did, destroying the community on their way to ransack Jerusalem. Whatever happened to the people of the scrolls, none of them could have predicted that their parchments would resurface in the late 1940s to surprise and enlighten a still-surviving world.

GALLERY

The Places and People of the Scrolls

A look at an ancient story . . . and a lasting legacy

MICHAEL MELFORD/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CREATIVE

LOOKING EAST toward Jordan at Marea Moarta, midway down the western shore of the Dead Sea—about 15 miles north of the caves where the scrolls were found.

RICHARD T. NOWITZ

A VIEW FROM ONE of the scroll caves, revealing a Dead Sea landscape that hasn’t changed much since the long-vanished Qumran community lived, worked, and worshipped in the area.

BURT GLINN/MAGNUM

NINE-YEAR-OLD BOYS studied in the Orthodox Mea She’arim section of Jerusalem, first established in 1874. The neighborhood’s name means one hundredfold, after the extra grain that Isaac reaped in Genesis 26:12—a reflection of the holy covenant that the ancient people who owned the Dead Sea Scrolls hoped to renew.

JAMES L. STANFIELD/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CREATIVE

THE FORTRESS OF MASADA was occupied by the Zealots, a Jewish sect that committed mass suicide rather than be slaughtered when the Romans attacked in 73–74 CE. At least one Qumran