The Dead Sea Scrolls have been in the news recently.
One of the manuscripts from the ancient texts has been pieced together and deciphered, which is a huge step forward in the research of the documents.
These scrolls were originally discovered in 1946, with more and more pieces being found over the years.
They are thought to date back over 2,000 years from the third century BC to the first century AD.
They were originally found in a cave in Qumran in Isreal near the Dead Sea by Bedouin shepherds.
Since this initial discovery over 900 manuscripts have been found.
The scrolls are made from parchment, papyrus and bronze, and contain Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic writing.
Much of the writing has been translated over the years, and some was in a code.
It’s been found that the scrolls include several of the earliest-known texts from the Bible, including the oldest surviving copy of the Ten Commandments.
As well as religious texts, the manuscripts detail secular things such as celebrations. For example, they had annual wine and harvest festivals.
In Jewish tradition, the Lunar calendar has always used. However, in these texts there is the first reference to the 364-day calendar.
This is significant, as it was the first time a calendar had been used that was unchangeable and static. In contrast, people had to decipher dates and times of observances from the moon and stars. By using a new way, it was much more reliable.
More: World
Some experts believe the manuscripts of the Dead Sea were written by the Essenes, a persecuted and fanatical Jewish sect that had retreated into the desert around Qumran and its caves.
One of the recent things discovered about the Dead Sea Scrolls is that the original writer (thought to be the leader of this sect) had made mistakes and left things out, so an aide had gone back over it afterwards and added notes into the margins.
Haifa University scholars Eshbal Ratson and Jonathan Ben-Dov of the Bible studies department have been working on piecing together 60 tiny fragments of parchment for the last year to make these discoveries.
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