The story of the Dead Sea Scrolls reads like a whodunit novel, full of intrigue and mystery. The intrigue lies in the internecine struggles among scholars entrusted with their study and safekeeping. They mystery lies in just how much they can tell us about biblical times and life in the early Christian church. From 1947 when the first scrolls were discovered in the caves around Qumran, until the mid-eighties when the academic gridlock began to break up, they have left us with many more questions than answers: Who wrote the scrolls? What connection do they have with Jewish sects or early Christianity? And what light do they shed on biblical times and the Bible itself? With the "rediscovery" of the scrolls in recent years, their significance to biblical studies is once again in the spotlight. This book provides to students and lay Christians an overview of the scrolls' controversial history and the various theories scholars hold about them. It is an excellent, readable introduction to who's who and what's what in the study of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

"What Daniel really wants is to be a detective, but so far he hasn't been having much luck. That is, not until he is assigned a project on the Dead Sea Scrolls and discovers that there are even bigger mysteries than burglaries and murders. Daniel's investigation takes him to the Shrine of the Book at The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, where he gets his first 'clues' from real experts, and then on to Qumran in the Judean Desert, where an archaeologist guides him through the place where the scrolls were found, home to a strange ancient community."--P. [4] of cover.

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.

Discover new technology that helps translators with previously unreadable Scroll fragments, supposedly "secret" scrolls in hiding, and the furious debate about who rightfully owns the Scrolls. Includes never before-published photographs.

Winner of the 2014 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature A thousand years ago, the most perfect copy of the Hebrew Bible was written. It was kept safe through one upheaval after another in the Middle East, and by the 1940s it was housed in a dark grotto in Aleppo, Syria, and had become known around the world as the Aleppo Codex. Journalist Matti Friedman’s true-life detective story traces how this precious manuscript was smuggled from its hiding place in Syria into the newly founded state of Israel and how and why many of its most sacred and valuable pages went missing. It’s a tale that involves grizzled secret agents, pious clergymen, shrewd antiquities collectors, and highly placed national figures who, as it turns out, would do anything to get their hands on an ancient, decaying book. What it reveals are uncomfortable truths about greed, state cover-ups, and the fascinating role of historical treasures in creating a national identity.