When the high priests of an isolated Jewish sect hid the Dead Sea Scrolls in the Judean Desert more than 2,000 years ago, they couldn’t have imagined that one day the whole world would be able to explore and examine them.
The story of how the Dead Sea Scrolls were accidentally discovered by a bored Bedouin shepherd boy who tossed a rock into a cave opening on the craggy hills overlooking the northwestern Dead Sea, only to hear it bounce off a clay jar, is part of local legend. Following this revelation, between 1947 and 1956 archeologists found eight complete scrolls and myriad fragments of other manuscripts in 11 caves, dating from the 3rd century BCE to the 1st century CE.