How new technology is being used to understand the scrolls.

Jews have a reputation for taking books seriously, so it should come as no surprise that Israel is an interesting place for librarians. Where else. . .

The furor over the 19th-century “discovery” of an ancient fragment of Deuteronomy says much about the influence on scholarship of scholars’ ideas, prejudices, and worldviews.

According to the ancient Jewish historian Josephus, the Essenes, an ascetic sect living in Qumran, wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls. But Josephus is far from reliable.

Comparing the 2,000-year-old Dead Sea Scrolls with other ancient texts of the Torah can resolve important textual ambiguities.

Minuscule scrolls from Second Temple-era phylacteries, discovered at Qumran, may reveal much about an ancient ritual practice.     

Twenty years ago, a scholarly consensus identified the Dead Sea Scrolls with the ascetic Essene community at Qumran. Now the picture is more complicated.

A recent book claims otherwise, but we possess far too little evidence to make confident claims about what ancient Jews accepted as Scripture before the rabbinic period.

Researchers at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands are using artificial intelligence to “read” the handwriting on the Dead Sea Scrolls.