Dead+Sea+Scrolls+and+Dead+Sea+sect


 * The Dead Sea scrolls**

These are the scrolls that were discovered in a cave near Khirbet Qumran on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea in 1947 by Bedouin of the Ta'amra tribe. Over the next few years, from 1949 to 1956, additional fragments of some 950 different scrolls were discovered in ten nearby caves, both by Bedouins and by a joint archaeological expedition. The texts are of great religious and historical significance, as they include the oldest known surviving copies of Biblical and extra-biblical documents and preserve evidence of great diversity in late Second Temple Judaism. They are written in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek.

**DEAD SEA SECT** Also called **Qumran Sect** or **Qumran Community** refers strictly to a Jewish community which lived in the Second Temple period and which adopted a strict and separatist way of life( established orthodoxy of its time, believing Israel to be under divine judgment). It is so called because the main source of knowledge about it derives from the discovery of a settlement at Khirbat Qumran, where it is believed to have lived. From The pottery and coins found there it appears that the settlement was inhabited from the beginning of the second century B.C.E.  until its destruction by the Romans shortly after the fall of the Second Temple, around 70 C.E.