Seth Udinski, FISM News

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On Tuesday, archeologists in Israel made a riveting discovery in the Cave of Horror near the Dead Sea.  They found additional fragments of the famed Dead Sea Scrolls, which were first discovered in the 1940s.  The discovery of the scrolls, most dating from the intertestamental period (the time between the end of the Old Testament in the 5th century BC and the beginning of the New Testament in the first century AD), is one of the most complete collections of Old Testament biblical texts from the ancient world.  The original discovery included significant portions of many Old Testament books, including Genesis, Psalms, and Isaiah. Archeologists date this current discovery of scrolls to the 2nd century AD.

The parchments appear to contain portions of a Greek copy of the Old Testament books of Nahum and Zechariah.  Historians believe these scrolls were hidden in the Cave of Horror during a Jewish uprising against the Roman Empire during the dynasty of the Emperor Hadrian in the early second century AD.  This is the first addition to the Dead Sea Scrolls since the mid-twentieth century.  Archeologists have been scrounging the caves of the Dead Sea for artifacts over the last four years, and now they have at last found a windfall.

In addition to these biblical copies, the archeologists also discovered coins from the first century AD, a mummified skeleton of a child that could be over 6,000 years old, and a reed basket that could be even older.