The Dead Sea Scrolls

"The story of the Dead Sea Scrolls begins in 1947, when – so the tale goes – a Bedouin shepherd found a collection of apparently ancient scrolls in a cave above Khirbet Qumran, near the north end of the Dead Sea. Over the course of the next year, seven scrolls from the cave reached scholarly hands. When examined by experts, the importance and antiquity of the find was quickly understood. For starters, included among these first seven scrolls was a fairly well-preserved copy of the biblical book of Isaiah, soon determined to be the oldest complete manuscript of a Hebrew scripture yet discovered and dating to before 100 BCE."