Dead Sea Scrolls

American  

plural noun

1. a number of leather, papyrus, and copper scrolls dating from c100 b.c. to a.d. 135, containing partial texts of some of the books of the Old Testament and some non-Biblical scrolls, in Hebrew and Aramaic, and including apocryphal writings, commentaries, hymns, and psalms: found in caves near the NW coast of the Dead Sea beginning in 1947.

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Dead Sea Scrolls British  

plural noun

1. a collection of manuscripts in Hebrew and Aramaic discovered in caves near the Dead Sea between 1947 and 1956. They are widely held to have been written between about 100 _bc and 68 _ad and provide important biblical evidence

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Dead Sea Scrolls Cultural  

1. A large collection of written scrolls, containing nearly all of the Old Testament, found in a cave near the Dead Sea in the late 1940s. The scrolls were part of a library collected by the Essenes, a religious community of Jews (see also Jews) that flourished for a few centuries around the time of Jesus. The scrolls are highly valued for the information they give about the Bible (see also Bible) and about Judaism in the period.

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Example Sentences

Only the Dead Sea Scrolls and a handful of fragmentary early medieval texts are older, and “an entire Hebrew Bible is relatively rare,” he said.

From Seattle Times • Mar. 22, 2023

The earliest known Hebrew biblical manuscripts are the Dead Sea Scrolls, which date from the third century B.C. to the first century A.D.

From New York Times • Feb. 15, 2023

The oldest copies of Biblical text ever found were the Dead Sea Scrolls that were discovered in caves in 1947.

From Reuters • Feb. 15, 2023

In 2011, digitized scans of the Dead Sea Scrolls went online to great fanfare.

From Washington Post • Oct. 10, 2022

I can’t remember how, or why, he somehow happened to mention the Dead Sea Scrolls.

From "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" by Alex Malcolm X;Hailey