JERUSALEM – Israeli archaeologists on Tuesday announced the discovery of dozens of new Dead Sea Scroll fragments with a biblical text found in a desert cave and believed to have been hidden during a Jewish uprising against Rome nearly 1,900 years ago.
The fragments of the parchment contain lines of Greek text from the books of Zechariah and Nahum and are according to the Israeli Antiquities Authority radiocarbon dating to the 2nd century AD. These are the first new scrolls found in archeological excavations in the desert south of Jerusalem in 60 years.
DEAD SEA SCROLLS DISCOVERED: Fragments thought to be blank text
The new pieces presumably belong to a set of parchment fragments found at a site known as ‘The Cave of Horror’ – named after the 40 human skeletons found there during excavations in the 1960s – which is also a Greek version of the Twelve Minors carry. Prophets. The cave is located in a remote gorge in the Judean desert south of Jerusalem.
File photo – an excavation of The Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947.
(Photo by: Universal History Archive / UIG via Getty Images)
The fragments were presumably hidden in the cave during the Bar Kochba uprising, an armed Jewish uprising against Rome during the reign of Emperor Hadrian, between 132 and 136 AD.
The artifacts were found during an operation by the Israeli Antiquities Authority in the Judean desert to find scrolls and other artifacts to prevent possible looting. Authorities held a news conference on Tuesday to unveil the discovery.
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The Dead Sea Scrolls, a collection of Jewish texts found in desert caves in the West Bank near Qumran in the 1940s and 1950s, dates from the 3rd century BC to the 1st century AD. It contains the earliest copies of biblical texts and documents showing the beliefs of a somewhat understandable Jewish sect.