The Great Isaiah Scroll

Late 1946, a Bedouin shepherd searched for a lost animal near the Dead Sea. He threw a rock, and heard pottery shatter.

Scripture: The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God stands forever.

Isaiah 40 surrounds this verse with good news for Jerusalem, a shepherd gathering lambs, and mountains weighed in scales.

Dated to around 125 BCE, it is the oldest known complete copy of the Book of Isaiah, written in Hebrew.

It hung in a bag on a tent pole for weeks, and its front cover broke off. A Bethlehem antiques dealer, Kando, couldn't read it, and sold it to Archbishop Mar Samuel.

Scripture: In July 1947, scholar J. van der Ploeg recognised it as Isaiah. A colleague doubted it, thinking anything so old must be fake.

Seventeen sheets of parchment, 54 columns, about 734 centimetres, or 24 feet, long.

That is about a thousand years older than the oldest Hebrew manuscripts of Isaiah known before.

Radiocarbon dating gives a calibrated range of 356 to 103 BC. Palaeography, dating by handwriting style, gives 150 to 100 BCE. Both are ranges, not a single year.

Its authors are unknown. The most accepted theory links it to the Essenes, a Jewish sect, though why it sat in the cave remains unknown.

It was published in 1950 by the American Schools of Oriental Research. Our sources don't say where it is kept today.

Its link to the verse is indirect. It shows nearly the whole book of Isaiah was being copied in Hebrew by that time. Our sources don't say how this verse reads in it.

An ancient scroll can show how long a book has been copied, but only so much about any one verse. May the Lord Jesus Christ be with you today. Follow Bible Evidence.