The Great Isaiah Scroll
The transmission of the Hebrew text across a thousand years can be checked directly, not assumed — and it holds up.
Named outside the BibleManuscriptc. 125 BC
A complete copy of Isaiah, seven metres long, a thousand years older than the medieval manuscripts that had been the oldest Hebrew text of the book. When the two were compared, the text proved substantially the same — the differences overwhelmingly spelling and minor variants rather than content.
The complete text of Isaiah in 54 columns, copied in the Hasmonean period.
- Found
- Cave 1, Qumran, by the Dead Sea, 1947 — Bedouin shepherds; subsequently excavated
- Now held at
- Shrine of the Book, Israel Museum, Jerusalem (1QIsaᵃ)
- Language
- Hebrew
How far it goes
Stability of the text is well demonstrated for Isaiah; other books among the scrolls show more variation, and the Qumran evidence as a whole is more complex than a single scroll suggests.
How historians use it
Foundational to secular textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible; the scroll is fully digitised and publicly readable.
In Scripture
Connects to
Sources
- The Digital Dead Sea Scrolls — Great Isaiah Scroll (Israel Museum)
- Ulrich & Flint, Qumran Cave 1.II: The Isaiah Scrolls (DJD XXXII, 2010)
These summaries are written in English for now. Translations follow.