One of the most significant discoveries of the 20th century was the discovery of the dead sea scrolls. As a result of this discovery, we were able to authenticate many of the Bible’s stories and events.

The discovery of the dead sea scrolls matters because it gets to the heart of the question of whether we can genuinely trust the Bible as we have it today.

Dead Sea scrolls were discovered in 1947 by three Bedouin shepherds exploring a mountainous area near Qumran (about 20 miles east of Jerusalem, on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea).  

When one of the shepherds threw a rock into a cave, they heard pottery shatter and decided to explore it further. Next morning, one of the cousins climbed into the cave and found the jar shattered and a bunch of scrolls inside. He was disappointed to come across a few ancient manuscripts; however, he had no idea that these scrolls would be worth millions and would turn the archaeological and biblical world upside down.

The rock they had thrown hit a ceramic pot containing leather and papyrus scrolls that were later determined to be nearly 20 centuries old.  

In the years following the discovery of the dead sea scrolls, archaeologists have found at least 11 caves with more than 1,000 different complete manuscripts or scrolls. 

Essentially, they discovered an ancient library of books that provided a glimpse into the first century and earlier. These writings were done between 250 BC, before the time of Christ, and 64 AD, before the Romans came in and destroyed everything in Jerusalem. While many of these writings were just personal notes for the community, there were also actual Biblical books among them. That is, every biblical book of the Old Testament except Ester was found in whole or, in some cases, partial copies.  

One of the most significant Biblical discoveries was the Great Isaiah scroll (which prophesies Jesus’ coming and accounts of His crucification). The reason it is essential is that this scroll dates to about 125 BC, about a century and a quarter before Jesus was born. Before this finding, the only copy of Isaiah we had in its entirety was a version dated to 1008 AD.  

The scroll was further tested by historians against the copy written a thousand years after Christ’s death in order to determine if there were any changes made. They found that the two documents were virtually identical with only a couple of spelling / grammatical mistakes, which is expected as they had been copied by hand over millennia. In totality, this shows how much care Jewish scholars took when copying the word of God. 

Dead sea scrolls offer assurance to those reading the Bible today that the scribes weren’t just changing things at random. Rather, the Jewish scholars made sure that the scriptures were carefully copied. 

The dead sea scrolls finding is one of the many reasons why we can trust that the Bible we have today has not been manipulated or tampered with.