The Broader Definition of Dead Sea Scrolls

Until this point in this article, the term “Dead Sea Scrolls” has been used to refer specifically to the manuscripts found in the eleven caves along the Dead Sea from 1947–1952. However, as Eibert Tigchelaar observes, in a “comprehensive sense” the term Dead Sea Scrolls encompasses textual finds from other sites in the Judaean Desert including Nahal Se’elim, Wadi Muraba’at, Nahal Hever, Wadi ed-Daliyeh, and Masada, among others (Tigchelaar, “Dead Sea Scrolls,” 163).

Just south of Qumran, in the fall of 1951 the Ta‘amireh Bedouin discovered texts in the caves at Wadi Muraba’at. De Vaux and Harding interrupted their excavation work at Qumran to work in the caves at Wadi Muraba’at from January to March in 1952. Yet it was the Bedouin who made the most significant discovery in 1955: a Hebrew scroll of the Minor Prophets (Mur 88; see Fields, “Discovery,” 211).

At the end of January 1960, Yohanan Aharoni conducted a survey in Nahal Se’elim, in the southern portion of the Judaean Desert. The excavation work yielded papyri, fragments of scrolls, and other material finds. These results prompted the Israel Exploration Society to arrange the first stage of the Judaean Desert Expeditions, which led to many of the finds detailed below (Eshel, “Se’elim,” 859).

In the spring of 1962, the Bedouins discovered about 40 Samaritan legal papyrus documents dated to the fourth century bc in the Abu Shinjeh cave in Wadi ed-Daliyeh, approximately 14 kilometers north of Jericho. Further excavations were undertaken from January 1963–February 1964. The largest papyrus, consisting of eighteen fragments, is a deed of sale for a slave (Gopp, “Daliyeh,” 162).

The excavations at Nahal Hever took place over a series of years in the 1950s to the early part of the 1960s and again in 1991. The official excavations produced several significant manuscript discoveries.

In 1953, Yohanan Aharoni conducted a survey of Nahal Hever, finding 10 caves and two Roman siege camps. In the spring of 1955 he examined Nahal Hever Cave 8, and fully excavated the cave in 1961. He discovered more than 40 skeletons—leading to the name “Cave of Horror”—and recovered many clay vessels from the era of the Bar Kokhba Revolt. Aharoni also discovered nine fragments of a Greek Minor Prophets scroll (8Hev 1). In 1960 and 1961, Yigael Yadin excavated the Cave of Letters, which yielded a fragment of the book of Psalms, fragments of the book of Numbers, 15 of Bar Kokhba’s letters, and what is now called the Babatha archive—a collection of legal documents of a Jewish woman, written between ad 93–132 in Greek, Nabataean, and Aramaic. This cave also preserved a burial chamber with 19 skeletons (Eshel, “Hever,” 357–58). (During the course of Aharoni’s excavation he discovered that the Cave of Letters had two openings and designated each opening with its own number: 5 and 6.)

The excavations at Masada between 1963–1965 were led by Yadin. The material finds were considerable, with manuscripts written in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, including 14 Hebrew parchments and one Hebrew papyrus in Paleo-Hebrew script. In addition, there are fragments from seven manuscripts of books of the Hebrew Bible: two scrolls of Leviticus, two of the Psalms, and one each of Genesis, Deuteronomy, and Ezekiel; there are also fragments from the book of Jubilees (Talmon, “Masada,” 521).

A helpful listing of the documents discovered in the Judean Desert was complied by Stephen Reed in The Dead Sea Scrolls Catalogue.