The Dead Sea Scrolls

Probably the most valuable of these documents is the `Isaiah Scroll`. Some 23 feet long and made of leather, it is a remarkable testimony to the textual accuracy of the Bible as we know it today. Modern methods of estimating the age of the scroll and its flax, or linen cover, reveal the fact that it is a transcription of the complete text of the book of Isaiah made in about 100 B.C. AT SOME POINT rather early in the spring of 1947, a Bedouin boy called Muhammad the Wolf was minding some goats near a cliff on the western shore of the Dead Sea. Climbing up after one that had strayed, he noticed a cave that he had not seen before and he idly threw a stone into it. There was an unfamiliar sound of breakage. The boy was frightened and ran away. But he later came back with another boy, and together they explored the cave. [Archaeology]