Dead Sea Scrolls

Do you know what the Dead Sea Scrolls are? Well, you should by now if you are a student at RWC. Simply, they are scrolls of all books of the Bible (excluding Ester). In, fact the are the oldest copy yet to be discovered. They were found in the 1950's in multiple caves in Qumran.

Okay, by now you probably think I am trying to bore you to death but I promise this will get interesting. These scrolls weren't originally found by some archeologist or anything, the first one was found by some random kid! Cool huh? Imagine yourself as a ten year old child discovering something hidden in a cave. He didn't originally know what it was, but honestly, I probably wouldn't either. This kid takes the piece of leather to a shoe maker to try to get some shoes out of the deal. Luckily, this shoe maker also knows his antiques and he could tell that this wasn't something he should be making a pair of sneakers out of. Good for him, right? This shoemaker apparently knew all the right people to call and eventually the rest of the scrolls were discovered.

I learned this in New Testament last week. We learned about the Dead Sea Scrolls in Old Testament too, so my original reaction when I saw it on the syllabus was "great... this again?"But I was completely different. The way my New Testament Professor lectured on this topic kept me (and my classmates?) so intrigued. Granted, my Old Testament Professor did teach us well, I just guess I didn't retain as much information on the Dead Sea Scrolls. Even though in the long run it is the same information, it doesn't always seem as such. Isn't funny how two teachers can teach the same thing so differently? 

I don't know how I found this but I was reading through some blogs and I found an art blog with an entry on the Dead Sea Scrolls... I thought that was rather cool because I have never really stopped to think and realize that I guess that is what they could be considered not only historical and Biblical pieces but also- art. 

Another "fun fact"-

Not only were the scrolls in an ancient language, but all of the words were connected. There were no spaces between words, no line breaks, and no punctuation. SOCOULDYOUIMAGINEREADINGANINTIREBOOK THATWASWRITENLIKETHIS Oh yeah, it was all in caps too 

P.S. Nicole- You did an amazing job on your Dead Sea Scroll presentation last semester  :)