What are the Dead Sea Scrolls? Where Were They Found? Maps of Qumran Area Who Wrote the Scrolls? What is BYU's Involvement? What is FARMS? What is CPART? Article - LDS Perspectives on the Dead Sea Scrolls The Book- LDS Perspectives on the Dead Sea Scrolls Video Highlights and Offer

The Dead Sea Scrolls contain the oldest copy by 1,000 years of the Hebrew Bible, every chapter save Esther. This legacy helps us understand more about the transmission of the Bible. It is not the original, but given the dating of the text, it is possibly only a few generations shy of the original. Of the other 800 manuscripts found at the site, known as Qumran, one-third are biblical in nature and the other two thirds are extra-biblical and sectarian literature of the period. It is the sectarian literature that gives us the best glimpse into the lives of the men who left this treasure behind.

Dead Sea Scrolls Executive Producer Sterling Van Wagenen and Director Curtis Briggs on cliffs overlooking the ruins

Brigham Young University scholars have recently become part of the international team that is preparing this ancient text for final publication. They have introduced new tools and talents that have changed the face of scrolls scholarship. They have probed the DNA of the scrolls, used Synthetic Aperture Radar developed by NASA to explore the remains of the site, and created sophisticated software to read the 800 manuscripts and tens of thousands of fragments in the library of Qumran.

BYU scholars have introduced diversity and synthesis to scrolls scholarship. Once the domain of only a handful of textual scholars, the scrolls are now open to academics from fields as diverse as microbiology, electrical and computer engineering, and software engineering. With these new tools, new ideas have emerged regarding the men who left behind this ancient library in the sands of the Judean Wilderness.

Cave 4 at Qumran where some of the Dead Sea Scrolls were found

They called themselves the Sons of Light. They left Jerusalem 200 years before Christ to return to the Mosaic tradition, a tradition that they felt had been lost. They wrote a Community Rule that dictated the strict order of their lives. They wrote a Temple Scroll regarding a future temple that they would restore to Israel; and they wrote a War Scroll about the final battle between the Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness. They believed that it was their destiny to fight in this great final battle and to restore the truly righteous to Israel. Theirs was a calling from God, they left to go into the wilderness and prepare the way of Him.

—Jane Wilson

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