THE CAVES OF QUMRÂN

It was in these caves that the famous Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered, carefully preserved in hermetically sealed clay jars. After the first discovery in 1947, all the caves in the region were meticulously excavated, uncovering extracts from 970 manuscripts in a dozen caves: among these are the oldest Hebrew writings of the Old Testament ever discovered. This is a major discovery of the ^20th century, the Holy Grail for theologians and historians of all persuasions. After half a century of twists and turns, these fragmented scrolls have finally been deciphered and published. In 2017, researchers found a new cave containing more scrolls. In 2018, hitherto undeciphered scrolls were interpreted by researchers, shedding new light on the mysterious religious community of the Essenes, a mystical Jewish sect that retreated to these desolate mountains in the late ^2nd century BC.

The manuscripts were first attributed to them: it was long thought that the Essene community, before being destroyed by the Romans in 68 AD, had time to cleverly hide the manuscripts in these jars. But the Essene thesis is increasingly being challenged by archaeologists and their scientific advances.

The story of a discovery. In 1947, a Bedouin discovered jars in a cave containing leather scrolls that were surprisingly well preserved. According to legend, he had come there in search of a lost goat. He found the first Dead Sea Scrolls, without realizing the importance of his discovery. The first excavations at the site began in 1951. In 1956, a team from the École Biblique et Archéologique Française in Jerusalem, led by Father Roland de Vaux, uncovered the nearby Essene archaeological site and discovered, in other caves (notably Cave 4), some 800 additional manuscripts, mostly on parchment but also on papyrus, mainly in ancient Hebrew and Aramaic, but also in Greek. Only a dozen scrolls were more or less intact: for all the others, a puzzle had to be put together from tens of thousands of fragments.

A priceless discovery. The oldest biblical text uncovered at Qumran is probably a fragment of a scroll from the Books of Samuel, dating from the late ^3rd century BC.

But the major discovery of the site is the world-famous Book of Isaiah. It is the oldest known complete Hebrew manuscript of a biblical book. The text is written in 54 columns on 17 sheets of leather sewn end-to-end, with a total length of around 7.30 m. The book was made in the ^2nd century BC.

With the exception of the Book of Esther, all the books of the canonical Jewish Bible have been found in these caves, some in multiple copies. To these must be added apocryphal writings, not recognized by Jewish or Christian canons: the Book of Enoch, an apocalyptic text from the ^2nd century BC, in Aramaic; the apocryphal Book of Genesis in Aramaic; the Book of Jubilees, a Hebrew text that goes from Genesis to the giving of the Law to Moses; the Prayer of Nabonides, a Babylonian king saved by a Jewish exorcist, also in Aramaic, and so on. Last but not least, specific Essene texts: the Rule of the Community, a Rule of War, the Temple Scroll (describing the future Temple), the Damascus Document (recounting the exile of the persecuted Essenes in Syria), hymns, blessings, hymns and commentaries on the prophetic books (Habakkuk, Isaiah, Micah, Nahum, Zephaniah, Hosea). Some of these manuscripts are now on display in the "Sanctuary of the Book" at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. Others are in the Rockefeller Museum and the Studium Biblicum Franciscanum, also in Jerusalem. Still others are at the Department of Antiquities museum in Amman, Jordan, and at the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris. The Sanctuary of the Book preserves the first three scrolls discovered in 1947: the Book of Isaiah, a commentary on the Book of Habakkuk and a community discipline manual.

The scrolls today. Fifteen years ago, 75% of the manuscripts were still unknown: differences between researchers, the religious prejudices of some, but also the reluctance of the Catholic Church, which until 1990 had a virtual monopoly on deciphering and translating the manuscripts, to publish the results of this research, clearly held back scientific progress. The end of this monopoly has enabled research to be relaunched. In 1991, a pirate edition of most of the manuscript photographs was published in the USA. Shortly afterwards, the Israeli authorities decided to give free access to all the manuscripts. Hence, in 1993, the microfiche edition of all the photographs. Since the 1990s, more deciphered texts have been published than in the previous forty years, and more or less exhaustive translations of the manuscripts are now widely available. But the difficult work of examining and deciphering these scrolls continues to this day. The latest technologies are opening up new opportunities to advance our knowledge of these texts, in particular through DNA studies of the skins used for the parchments, which could help determine their origin.