Essays and Studies

The Scriptorium

Studies on how the Bible was written, copied and preserved, from the caves of Qumran to the printed page.

Start ReadingManuscripts 101

The Reading Room

Studies and Essays

Each study is written for curious readers, not specialists, and draws on published scholarship and museum sources.

New to manuscripts? Start with Manuscripts 101

The Great Isaiah Scroll, one of the Dead Sea Scrolls found at Qumran

Study · The Hebrew Bible

The Dead Sea Scrolls

Beginning in 1947, caves near Qumran gave up fragments of roughly 900 to 1,000 manuscripts, among them the oldest surviving copies of nearly every book of the Hebrew Bible. They pushed the evidence for the Hebrew text back about a thousand years.

By Noah Hawkins · Discovered 1947 · Qumran

More essays are being prepared.