Qumran (Israel)

Overview

Qumran is an archaeological site famous for the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Qumran is in the Judean Wilderness near the Dead Sea in the West Bank about 1,200 feet below sea level. It is believed the ancient settlement of Qumran was established by a Jewish group called the Essenes who lived here from about 200 BC to around 68 AD. The Essenes were a strict and ascetic Jewish sect known for their piety towards God (Josephus Wars 2:8). The site of Qumran consists of a number of buildings, including a dining hall, a scriptorium, and a number of ritual baths or mikvehs. The Essenes are thought to have spent much of their time copying and studying religious texts.

The Dead Sea Scrolls play a monumental role in the validity of the Bible. There are 1,100 documents that have been found to date, most on leather parchment (goat or sheep skin) and one on copper. The longest scroll is the Temple Scroll and measures 26 feet long. The scrolls were discovered in eleven caves between the years of 1947 and 1956. They include fragments from every book of the Old Testament except for the Book of Esther (Esther might have been lost or decomposed due to time or may have been damaged by the Bedouin shepherds).