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In 1947, while an Arab shepherd boy looked for a missing goat, he threw a stone into a hillside cave. He heard what sounded like the breaking of pottery. Investigating the cave with a friend, they found objects that looked like miniature mummies. They were actually leather scrolls wrapped in linen cloth, and covered with a hardened substance. These scrolls became known as The Dead Sea Scrolls since the cave in which they were found is near the western shore of the Dead Sea.
Among the scrolls were a collection of Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek manuscripts. More than one-third of these books are Old Testament manuscripts. There are manuscripts or fragments of every book of the Old Testament except Esther. A well preserved scroll of Isaiah was written in an early form of the "square letter", which places its origin in the second century B.C. This gives validity to the prophecies contained in this book concerning the Messiah. The book of Isaiah as written in the King James Version of the Bible is very accurate when compared to the 2000 year old manuscript.
These Scrolls are important to Christians because they give evidence of the accuracy of the Bible and the prophecies contained within. For more information on this important archaeological discovery and the research that continues today see the
Dead Sea Scrolls Web site.
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