The Biblical manuscripts from Qumran, which include at least fragments from every book of the Old Testament, except perhaps for the Book of Esther, provide a far older cross-section of scriptural tradition than that available to scholars before. While some of the Qumran biblical manuscripts are nearly identical to the Masoretic, or traditional, Hebrew text of the Old Testament, some manuscripts of the books of Exodus and Samuel found in Cave Four exhibit dramatic differences in both language and content. In their astonishing range of textual variants, the Qumran biblical discoveries have prompted scholars to reconsider the once-accepted theories of the development of the modern biblical text from only three manuscript families: of the Masoretic text, of the Hebrew original of the Septuagint, and of the Samaritan Pentateuch. It is now becoming increasingly clear that the Old Testament scripture was extremely fluid until its canonization around A.D. 100. Brian M Fagan & Charlotte Beck, Oxford Companion to Archaeology
Dead in the underground vaults of the Rockefeller Museum in Jerusalem lie the remains of one of the oldest Biblical manuscripts in existence: the Dead Sea Scrolls. Hidden in desert caves for more than two thousand years, many of these scrolls are now buried in the vaults of the museum. For almost half a century they’ve been seen only by a handful of privileged scholars. Ancient Mysteries: Enigma of the Dead Sea Scrolls, A&E 1994
Publication delay and requests for access denied. ibid.
Judea Winter 1947: Three desert herdsmen made their way along the shores of the Dead Sea. ibid.
Hundreds of manuscripts and tens of thousands of fragments were dug out of more than a dozen caves in and around Qumran. ibid.
Eight scholars: the international team. ibid.
The Temple Scroll was the eighth to come into Israeli hands. ibid.
Hidden in a cave for almost 2,000 years a copper scroll, a treasure map from the time of Jesus. Could these brittle fragments of corroded metal hold the clues to finding ancient buried gold and silver that today would be worth millions of pounds? But who wrote the mystifying text? Is the scroll genuine? If it is, where did these vast treasures come from and why were they buried? And most intriguing of all could they still be out there? Ancient Mysteries s1e6: Dead Sea Treasure Map, Channel 5 2017
Whoever buried the treasure wanted to make sure that it could be found again. ibid.
For thousands of years they lay hidden in desert caves. 900 texts most of them in fragments creating an enduring puzzle. The Dead Sea Scrolls are the oldest and most complete set of ancient writings ever unearthed in modern times. The Truth Behind s2e5: The Dead Sea Scrolls, National Geographic 2006
The enigmatic copper scrolls which reads like a treasure map. ibid.
In 1954 pieces of a scroll appeared for sale in America in the classified ads of The Wall Street Journal. An ad listed four of the Dead Sea Scrolls for sale. ibid.
Early scholars smoked while doing their work. ibid.
In small settlements along the west bank of this Dead Sea, Jewish scholars once sought refuge from the moral decay of their time. The refuge ended shortly after the time of Christ. In Search of s2e10 … Dead Sea Scrolls, History 1978
A Jewish secret call the Essenes apparently knew the end was coming. For generations they had collected the wisdom of their people and the earliest known versions of the Old Testament. These treasures they hid in the caves that only they knew existed in the mountains behind their settlement. 19 centuries later the treasure would be rediscovered. ibid.
News of the discovery touched off a stampede. ibid.