You may have seen one of the many articles about some new fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS) that were recently discovered. Fascinating stuff! Hoping to beat looters to a great archeological find, archeologists rappelled down a cliff to reach a cave where they found ancient treasure: coins, baskets, scroll fragments and human remains! All we need to complete the story is a car chase through the desert and maybe one of the archeologists saying, This belongs in a museum!

Well, what is the significance of this find? I will provide a little background here and then show you a little about how archeologists identify scraps of ancient documents.

The Dead Sea Scrolls were originally deposited in caves near the Dead Sea, likely to protect them during the Jewish War of A.D. 70. Most were discovered in the 1940s and 50s.

What about the new scroll fragments? A caveat: there is a lot of work yet to be done, so anything we say now about the fragments may be corrected later. Since this new cave includes coins from the Bar Kokhba revolt of A.D. 135, it seems likely that the scroll fragments were deposited then, almost 70 years after the other scrolls were deposited in other caves. Most of the scroll fragments are very small and only one clear photograph has been published so far.

How can an archeologist identify such tiny fragments? Let me walk you through how I identified it. I am not an archeologist or a paleographer, but I like looking at ancient manuscripts, and the methods I describe here are similar to what the experts use.

I started with the three lines that had the most visible letters and tried to make sense of them.

...峞 峇.. (地ner t ka)
...峉峊峇峊 (存ion autou)
缶峇峉... (圯n tais ka)

The first line has 廒彖峸, man, but not enough letters to make sense of the rest. The second line was a little easier. The first word I could think of that ends in 庣怷彖 in Greek is 弇峸庣怷彖, neighbor. It is followed by 帢廔怷彃, his. In the third line, 廒彖 帢彃 means in the. It is followed by 庥帢..., which looks like it is the beginning of 庥帢帤巹帢庣, hearts. So far we have a man his neighbor in the hearts. If this fragment is from the Septuagint (LXX, the Greek Old Testament), then thats probably enough information to identify it.

I used my Bible software to search for the phrases 廒彖庢 (man), 弇峸庣怷彖 帢廔怷彃 (his neighbor) and 廒彖 帢彃 庥帢帤巹帢庣 (in the hearts). A setback: there is no place in the LXX that has that combination of phrases near each other. But there is a verse that has the last two items. Zech. 8:17 has this:

庥帢廔 廒庥帢怷 廔棒 庥帢庥巹帢彖
怷彃 弇庢巹怷彖 帢廔怷彃 弮廔 弇怷帠巹庤庰庛庰
廒彖 帢彃 庥帢帤巹帢庣 廔弮彃僇賤

And each (of you), do not plan evil against his neighbor in your hearts

(The underlined letters are the ones that can be easily read in the scroll fragment.)

Looks pretty close! The DSS fragment seems to fit Zech. 8:17, but we still have the problem of 廒彖峸 (man) in the first line. That doesnt match up with Zech. 8:17 or the verse before. But now we learn something interesting that solves the problem. The same Hebrew word 硒蚸 is sometimes translated into Greek with 廒彖峸, man, and sometimes with 廒庥帢怷, each. Both translation choices can be found elsewhere in the LXX (for example, each to his neighbor vs. a man to his neighbor). Zech. 8:17 in the LXX uses 廒庥帢怷, but this new (very old!) Dead Sea Scroll fragment has instead 廒彖峸.

Bottom line: very interesting find, but only tiny fragments of an ancient Greek translation of Zechariah and Nahum survive. There are some small differences from the LXX, although the archeological team has indicated that some other small differences show up in some of the unpublished fragments.

P.S. Do you find this kind of thing fascinating? Come study with us! Talbot School of Theology has fully online M.A. programs in Old Testament and in New Testament.

This adapted article was originally posted on March 17, 2021, on The Good Book Blog.