We stopped by Qumran, that amazing desert hideout that was occupied by the ultra-strict Essene sect (John the Baptist quite possibly had some association with the Essenes).
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| I sure love the panorama setting. See the little cave in the bottom middle? |
These folks copied the Scriptures rather scrupulously. In the cave pictured above and below (next to Dave and Edi), was found the famous Isaiah scroll. The Dead Sea Scrolls took back our Old Testament manuscripts a whole 1000 years closer to the original. Overnight we were able to assess another thousand years of biblical manuscript transmission only to find it essentially unchanged.
