Dead Sea Scrolls and the Lost Books
The Dead Sea Scrolls are about 900 Jewish manuscripts, most of them in fragments, recovered from eleven caves near Qumran beginning in 1947. Copied between roughly the third century BC and the first century AD, mostly in Hebrew with some Aramaic and Greek, they hold the oldest surviving copies of the Hebrew Bible and the books that sat beside it on the shelf: Enoch, Jubilees, Tobit, and the rulebooks of the community that hid them.
- 1947First scrolls pulled from a cave above the Dead Sea
- 11Caves near Qumran that held manuscripts
- 900+Manuscripts, most of them fragments
- 3Languages: Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek
- 1,000Years older than the medieval codices that were the oldest Hebrew Bible copies before the find
What they
really are.
Plenty of what gets said about the scrolls is overstated. Here is what the find is, what scholars still argue about, and where it touches the Bible you read.
The story starts in 1947, when a Bedouin shepherd threw a stone into a cave in the cliffs above the Dead Sea and heard pottery break. Inside were clay jars holding leather scrolls. Over the next decade, Bedouin searchers and archaeologists worked through ten more caves around Khirbet Qumran, a small settlement on a terrace near the shore. Cave 4 alone held thousands of fragments from hundreds of different manuscripts.
What came out of the ground was a library, and a mixed one. About a quarter of the manuscripts are copies of books in the Hebrew Bible. The rest are Jewish writings that were never in anyone's Bible, or were in some Bibles and not others: retellings of Genesis, prayers and hymns, rules for community life, commentaries on the prophets, calendars, and books like Enoch and Jubilees that the Western church later forgot.
That second group is why the scrolls matter so much for reading the New Testament. Dr. Matthias Henze argues that the centuries between Malachi and Matthew were never silent. Ideas that show up fully formed in the Gospels, from a crowded world of angels and demons to a coming Messiah and the resurrection of the dead, were being written down and argued over in exactly this period. The scrolls let you hear that argument in the original voices.
Who owned the library is still debated. Many scholars connect it with the Essenes, a Jewish movement described by Josephus, Philo and Pliny the Elder, and with the people who lived at Qumran. Others think the caves also hid scrolls carried out of Jerusalem before the Roman war of AD 66 to 73. Nobody disputes the dates, the languages, or the fact that these are the oldest copies of biblical books anyone has found.
Four shelves,
one library.
Scholars sort the scrolls, and the lost books around them, onto four rough shelves. Pick one to see what sits on it, what it changes for Bible readers, and which Dig In conversation covers it.
Bible manuscripts
Every book of the Hebrew Bible except Esther turns up at Qumran, most in several copies. Psalms, Deuteronomy and Isaiah were copied most often, which tells you which books this community lived in. The Great Isaiah Scroll from Cave 1 runs all 66 chapters and is about a thousand years older than the medieval codices that were the oldest copies before 1947.
The scrolls show a text that was stable in some books and still settling in others. Isaiah matches the later standard Hebrew text closely. Jeremiah and Samuel circulated in more than one edition, some closer to the Greek Septuagint, and several modern English Bibles restored a missing paragraph at the end of 1 Samuel 10 from a Qumran copy.
The caves also held Aramaic translations, called Targums, including a Targum of Job from Cave 11. These were interpretive paraphrases read aloud in synagogue after the Hebrew, and they shaped how ordinary Jews in Galilee heard Scripture.
- Great Isaiah Scroll
- Psalms scrolls
- Targum of Job
- Samuel from Cave 4
Apocrypha
The Apocrypha are Jewish books from the Second Temple period that traveled with the Greek Septuagint and stayed in Catholic and Orthodox Old Testaments: Tobit, Judith, 1 and 2 Maccabees, the Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach, Baruch, and additions to Esther and Daniel. Catholics call them deuterocanonical. Protestant reformers moved them into a separate section, which is why the 1611 King James Bible printed them between the Old and New Testaments, and most later Protestant Bibles dropped them. These are the books people usually mean by "books removed from the Bible."
Qumran turned up Tobit in Aramaic and Hebrew and Sirach in Hebrew, so these were never Greek-only curiosities. Dr. Matthias Henze explains how the Apocrypha differ from the Pseudepigrapha and the scrolls, why the books were left out, and who narrowed the field after the Temple fell in AD 70.
A second, later shelf carries the same name. Early Christian apocrypha such as the Protevangelium of James and the Infancy Gospel of Thomas were written in the centuries after the New Testament to fill the silence about Mary and the childhood of Jesus. Dr. Eric Vanden Eykel shows how they shaped the nativity scene most people picture, three kings included.
- Tobit
- Sirach
- 1 and 2 Maccabees
- Protevangelium of James
Pseudepigrapha
Pseudepigrapha are writings credited to an ancient figure who did not write them: Enoch, Moses, Baruch, Ezra. The giant on this shelf is 1 Enoch, which is really five booklets. Its oldest section, the Book of the Watchers, tells of angels who came down, married human women and fathered giants, the Nephilim of Genesis 6.
Dr. James VanderKam points out that Qumran held 11 copies of 1 Enoch, more than most books of the Hebrew Bible found there. The letter of Jude quotes it as prophecy in Jude 14 and 15, writers like Tertullian and Irenaeus treated it as authoritative, and then the Western church lost it for more than a thousand years. Only the Ethiopian church kept the complete text, and its Bible still includes Enoch and Jubilees.
Jubilees retells Genesis and the start of Exodus inside a 364-day solar calendar, the calendar the Qumran community kept. The Parables of Enoch, the booklet with the heavenly Son of Man, is the one section of 1 Enoch missing from the Qumran fragments. Later books such as 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra, which Henze covers, wrestle with the destruction of the Temple.
- 1 Enoch
- Jubilees
- 2 Baruch
- 4 Ezra
Sectarian texts
Then come the texts nobody had read for two thousand years: the community's own writings. The Community Rule sets out how members joined and lived. The War Scroll describes a final battle between the Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness. The pesharim read prophets like Habakkuk as coded messages about the group's leader, the Teacher of Righteousness, and his enemies. One of these, the Damascus Document, was already known from medieval copies found in a Cairo synagogue storeroom.
Dr. John J. Collins shows why these texts matter for the word Messiah. The Community Rule looks for two anointed figures, a messiah of Aaron and a messiah of Israel, one priestly and one royal. Communities like Qumran expected angels to fight beside them against Rome. Set against that hope, a crucified Messiah made little sense, which is why the first followers of Jesus had to rethink what the title meant.
- Community Rule
- War Scroll
- Damascus Document
- Pesher Habakkuk
Five episodes,
from the caves.
Start with Dr. VanderKam for the caves and Enoch, then follow the thread that pulls you: messiahs, Targums, the books between the Testaments, or the gospels that never made it.
Inside the Dead Sea Scrolls: Enoch, Jubilees, and Second Temple Judaism
with Dr. James VanderKam, John A. O'Brien Professor Emeritus, University of Notre DameVanderKam spent more than 30 years with the manuscripts and edited 13 volumes of the official publication series. He takes you into the caves, walks through the five booklets of 1 Enoch, explains why the Qumran community treated it as Scripture, and shows how Augustine's reading of Genesis 6 led the church to set the Watchers story aside.
- Qumran caves
- 1 Enoch
- The Watchers
- Jubilees calendar
- Ethiopia
The Books Jesus Read That Never Made the Bible
Dr. Matthias Henze, Rice UniversityThe "silent years" were a burst of Jewish writing, and Henze lands on a verse in Luke 4 that carries more weight once you know what the synagogue already believed.
ListenThe Dead Sea Scrolls Reveal What "Messiah" Really Meant
Dr. John J. Collins, scholar of apocalyptic Judaism and the scrollsWhy the scrolls community expected two messiahs, and why a crucified one forced the first Christians to rethink the title.
ListenWhat Are the Targums? The Ancient Aramaic Texts That Shaped How Jesus Read Scripture
Dr. Bruce Chilton, PhD, University of CambridgeChilton wrote the first critical commentary on the Isaiah Targum. He shows where "kingdom of God" was already being preached, and what Cain says in the Targum that Genesis leaves out.
ListenThe Gospels Early Christians Wish Existed
Dr. Eric Vanden Eykel, Ferrum CollegeThe Protevangelium of James, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, and how later stories built the Christmas scene the Gospels never describe.
ListenEnoch, canon
and caves.
Short, sourced answers to the questions that bring most people to this topic. Each answer names the episode where it comes from.
What are the Dead Sea Scrolls?
The Dead Sea Scrolls are about 900 Jewish manuscripts, mostly fragments, found from 1947 onward in eleven caves near Qumran on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea. They were copied between about the third century BC and the first century AD, mainly in Hebrew, with some Aramaic and Greek.
Roughly a quarter are copies of books of the Hebrew Bible. The rest include books like Enoch and Jubilees, Aramaic Targums, and the community's own rules, hymns and commentaries on the prophets.
Is the Book of Enoch in the Bible?
Not in Jewish, Catholic or Protestant Bibles. The Ethiopian Orthodox church includes 1 Enoch in its Bible and preserved the only complete text. Before that, the book was widely read: Qumran held 11 copies, and the letter of Jude quotes it as prophecy in Jude 14 and 15.
Dr. James VanderKam explains that early Christian writers such as Tertullian treated Enoch as authoritative before the Western church set it aside for more than a thousand years.
What books were removed from the Bible?
Usually people mean the Apocrypha: Tobit, Judith, 1 and 2 Maccabees, the Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach, Baruch and additions to Esther and Daniel. They were never part of the Hebrew Bible, but they traveled with the Greek Septuagint that early Christians used, and Catholic and Orthodox churches still include them.
Protestant reformers set them in a separate section, and later Protestant printings left them out. Dr. Matthias Henze explains how the field of authoritative Jewish books narrowed after the Temple fell in AD 70.
Did Jesus know the Book of Enoch?
No Gospel says Jesus read Enoch, but the world he taught in was full of its ideas. Dr. VanderKam argues that Jesus and the apostles grew up in a world saturated with Enochic thought, and he connects the Son of Man title in the Gospels to the heavenly judge in the Parables of Enoch.
Dr. Henze makes the wider case that Jesus and his first followers knew the Jewish writings from between the Testaments well, which is why so much in the Gospels assumes ideas the Old Testament barely mentions.
Who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls?
No single author. Many scholars connect the library with the Essenes, a Jewish movement described by Josephus, Philo and Pliny the Elder, and with the community that lived at Qumran and wrote texts like the Community Rule and the War Scroll.
Others argue that some of the scrolls were brought from Jerusalem and hidden in the caves before the Roman war of AD 66 to 73.
Do the Dead Sea Scrolls change the Bible?
They confirm far more than they change. The Great Isaiah Scroll shows the text of Isaiah was copied with great care for about a thousand years before the medieval manuscripts.
They also show that books like Jeremiah and Samuel circulated in more than one form, and translators now consult the scrolls directly. Several modern English Bibles add a paragraph at the end of 1 Samuel 10 about King Nahash that was restored from a Qumran copy.
The caves
are open.
Subscribe on YouTube to hear from the scholars who have spent their careers with these manuscripts. New episodes land every Monday at 6:15 AM Eastern, and you can join the email list on the subscribe page.
Prefer audio? Find the show on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.