Exploring the Bible

The Dead Sea Scrolls contained all but one of the Books from the Old Testament. In all there were some 225 copies of various biblical books found in the caves above and around Qumran. This however, was only a portion of the scrolls discovered in the caves.  The scrolls which were not Books found in the ancient Hebrew Bible fall into two categories. The first is Non-Biblical Compositions. The second classification is Documents and Letters.  Most of the Documents and Letters were found in cave 5/6 which came to be known as the Cave of the Letters. Here they found fifty-five documents. Fifteen were military letters stored in a leather waterskin. There were also thirty-five financial documents that were apparently the personal archive of a refugee named Babatha. The final five documents belonged to Eleazar, the son of Shmuel. These were contracts found in a leather purse and one hidden inside a reed. The Non-Biblical Compositions have been broken down into at least ten different ...

Roughly a year before the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered by a shepherd boy, another major discovery took place in Egypt. Near the city of Nag Hammadi two brothers discovered a collection of ancient writings. The actual circumstances of the discovery remain unclear.  The brothers who made the discovery were somewhat vague in the details of how and exactly where the discovery took place. It seems clear the writings were found in a grave. It is considered highly probable the brothers were looting an ancient grave when they made the discovery and thus, they were not completely forthcoming with details. Regardless of where or how it was discovered, what they found was truly extraordinary. In all, the discovery consisted of thirteen leather bound papyrus codices. These codices contained fifty-two separate entries, mostly Gnostic treatises. Perhaps the best known of these is the Gospel of Thomas. The discovery of these texts helped show the vast differences between the early Christians ...