Dead Sea Scrolls

The Dead Sea Scrolls were documents found in Judean Caves in 1947.  These documents, written in Hebrew and Aramaic, were probably written by the Essenes in the Qumran area around 250 B.C. to 70 A.D.  They were discovered in eleven caves along the northwest shore of the Dead Sea.  Hundreds of separate scrolls and scroll fragments have been found that cover both biblical and non-biblical writings.  The book of Esther is the only Old Testament book not found among the scrolls. 

The book of Isaiah was found along with Deuteronomy and the Psalms.  The Isaiah scroll is particularly important since it predates the oldest existing copy of Isaiah by 1000 years and helped to demonstrate the extreme accuracy of the copying method of the biblical documents.