The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition. 2002.
Dead Sea Scrolls
A large collection of written scrolls, containing nearly all of the Old Testament, found in a cave near the Dead Sea in the late 1940s. The scrolls were part of a library collected by the Essenes, a religious community of Jews that flourished for a few centuries around the time of Jesus. The scrolls are highly valued for the information they give about the Bible and about Judaism in the period.
