The Dead Sea Scrolls? Just saying those words out loud could make some people yawn and change the subject. Anything with the word “Dead” in its name is not much of a conversation starter.

In context, the Dead Sea is an extremely salty body of water, well below sea level, in a desert region in the Middle East. I visited Israel, as a tourist, and I saw some water through a bus window, and someone told us that was the Dead Sea.

There is also a story about scrolls. Long ago, books were written on scrolls, and scroll books are still used for ceremonies in Jewish Synagogues.

A book with pages, and binding, and a cover, is called a “codex” and that format is probably from early Christians in the Roman Empire. Codex books can be read by one person, while scrolls are more commonly read by a narrator, to an audience.

So, scrolls are mostly very old.

• READ: Dead Sea Scrolls: Wikipedia

In the year 1946, some Arab shepherd boys found some scrolls in clay jars, in a cave, near the Dead Sea. That was the beginning, and other books and fragments have been found since. The material is mostly preserved in a museum, in Israel, today.

Strangely, the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered at the time when Israel was reborn as a nation. That rebirth was predicted by ancient prophets, but not many believed it would happen.

We know now, that a Jewish religious group hid their ancient books in secret places, in the desert near the Dead Sea. Those religious people were known as Essenes.

In the Christian Bible, a cousin of Jesus, John the Baptist, preached and baptized close to where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found. He might have been an Essene, or at least a neighbor and associate, as the Essenes also practiced baptism as one of their rites.

At the time of Jesus and his cousin John, the Essenes had existed for almost two hundred years. In our time, the Dead Sea Scrolls are about two thousand years old, and even older.

One way to describe the Essenes is a religion crossed with a museum. They were antiquarians, and for them, God’s truth was found in old things. We might compare them to the Christian Amish people today, who really value old things and ideas. A scroll preserved by the Essenes would be a faithful copy of a much older book.

The Dead Sea Scrolls are a picture of something much older than the Essenes, preserved accurately and faithfully, and they did not add new ideas. Those Arab Shepherd boys found antique museum artifacts left in a cave by the Essenes. The scrolls were reproductions of books about five hundred years old when they were packed away in jars.

We could compare them to our King James Bible, now. If the book was adulterated and had no reliability, we would know.

It’s easy to see why archaeologists are interested in the Scrolls. They are very old, and they are accurate reproductions of something much older, like a window into the very ancient past.

There is another important story; Isaiah.

An ancient prophet “Isaiah” lived in Israel about five hundred years before the Essenes. His name is on a large book in the Hebrew Bible, the Christian Old Testament, with sixty-six chapters. The Essenes valued Isaiah’s book and preserved it carefully. It is the largest book among the Dead Sea Scrolls, and it shows all sixty-six chapters.

Modern scholars disagree with the Essenes. The popular modern idea is that only the first thirty-nine chapters were written by Isaiah, and the other twenty-seven chapters were added at later dates, by different authors. To an Essene, that would make their sacred book a fraud.

Before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the oldest scrolls of the Hebrew Bible discovered were written about a thousand years after the Essenes. There was no way to show that only Isaiah wrote his book, and no one else added to it later.

The Essenes lived closer to the original, and they studied the past carefully, and Isaiah was a more recent past to them.

So, why is this important?

The Dead Sea Scrolls of Isaiah were fully complete, making it unlikely that the Book of Isaiah is a collection of many authors. It seems to be what it claims to be, the work of one author, the prophet Isaiah. The Essenes believed that, and they knew who Isaiah was.

Changing that book into a religious fraud with random authors undermines the credibility of the Bible, and the beliefs of the Jews and the Christians. It is one of those huge issues that most of us miss. For Christians, the book of Isaiah is a foundation for the faith. Take it away, and everything crumbles. The ancient Essenes restored a collapsing foundation, two thousand years after they were gone.

The Dead Sea Scrolls are significant for us. We read and listen to parts of Isaiah’s book more than we know.

For example, in chapter 53, we read:

“But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds, we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” (Isaiah 53: 5 and 6)

For a Christian, that person is Jesus.

Also, you might know the words from Handel’s Messiah:

“For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. and he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace and the government will be on his shoulders.” (Isaiah 9: 6)

And you might know the words to a Christmas carol:

“Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.” (Isaiah 7:14)

READ: The Great Isaiah Scroll: