Dead Sea Scrolls Exhibit

QUESTION: Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit - Where could I go to see the "Great Isaiah Scroll" on exhibit?

ANSWER:

The first of the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in a cave near the Dead Sea in 1947 by a young Bedouin shepherd, who was looking for a lost goat. After the initial discovery in 1947, hundreds of documents in the form of thousands of fragments were found over a nine-year period (1947-1956) from a total of 11 caves located near the Dead Sea.

The Dead Sea Scrolls consist of ancient copies of biblical texts, ancient copies of apocryphal and pseudepigraphical texts and miscellaneous ancient writings, including commentaries on biblical texts and communal texts which appear to contain much information about the religious sect which preserved the Dead Sea Scrolls.

The Dead Sea Scrolls are important to biblical archaeologists because they represent the oldest copies of biblical texts yet discovered. Prior to the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the oldest copies of the Hebrew Old Testament written in Hebrew, dated from the ninth century, A.D. Portions of the Dead Sea Scrolls predate these texts by over a millennium. These Dead Sea fragments even predate Christ. This is important because it shows that certain important Messianic prophecies were not written after the fact.

For example, the famous Suffering Servant passage found in Isaiah 52:13-53:12, cited by Christians as a prophetic description of Christ’s sufferings, was preserved in the Great Isaiah Scroll a hundred years before Christ’s incarnation. A Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit including the Great Isaiah Scroll can be seen on display at the “Shrine of the Book” in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, Israel (P.O. Box 71117, Jerusalem, Israel, 91710). The Shrine of the Book was built in 1965 specifically to house the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit.