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So this week it sounds like we're talking about something that's dead. Sounds so exciting - not! But this is one of those times you can't judge a book by its cover - or a blog post by its title. The Dead Sea Scrolls are actually a vital part of our Bible today, and a reason we know the text we have is reliable.

The Dead Sea scrolls are named as such because they were found in a total of eleven caves near the Dead Sea, which is on the border between Israel and Jordan in the Middle East. The scrolls were written in the 2nd century B.C. Traditionally, it is believed that a Jewish sect called the Essenes was responsible for the scrolls, but recently scholars are forming theories about the scrolls originating from other groups, as there is no concrete proof of their origin.

The scrolls were discovered in our modern world between 1947 and 1956 by a Bedouin shepherd named Muhammed edh-Dhib. They contain portions from nearly every book in our Old Testament as well as many other ancient texts. Most of what was found was small fragments of manuscripts, but a few nearly complete manuscripts were found as well. Included in these manuscripts are 19 copies of the book of Isaiah, 25 copies of Deuteronomy, and 30 copies of the Psalms.

But wait - didn't we already have our Bible intact by the late 1940s? Why are these documents so important? What is so significant is that the scrolls confirmed the text we already had, and made it even more valid. Before the discovery of the scrolls, the oldest Hebrew manuscripts of the Old Testament that we had were from the 10th century - about 1200 years newer than the Dead Sea scrolls! In the world of ancient texts, older is always better because it means that document is closer to the original source. There are some differences between these scrolls and the commonly accepted Hebrew text that was around when they were discovered, but amazingly those differences are relatively minor.

The scrolls have greatly enhanced our knowledge of both Judaism and Christianity, because they have helped scholars immensely in the field of textual criticism. What does that mean for regular people like us? It means that their work gives us a Bible that gets ever closer to the actual, original text, which means we can have even more certainty that what we are reading is truly God's Word.