A Bedouin shepherd looking for strays happened idly to throw a rock into one of the caves which characterized the landscape at Khirbet Qumran, on the Dead Sea. He heard an unexpected sound, that of shattered pottery, and went in to investigate. That 1947 find set off a generation of scholarship, and access to some of the oldest and most accurate texts yet of the Old Testament, as well as a wealth of information about a fascinating sect of Judaism.
The process of collecting and translating these documents has been marked by intrigue and controversy. The formidable task of piecing together the thousands of fragments which represent most of the scroll has been likened to assembling a jigsaw puzzle with missing parts and no picture on the box to go by. Politics and personalities, as well as the historical background, complicated the picture further, so that today, the task is far from complete. Recall that 1948 marked the end of the British mandate and the first Arab-Israeli war which established Israel as an independent state.
In form, the scrolls are fragments and more complete portions of scrolls, which predate our current form of assembling books. Laboriously hand-copied, the scrolls include books of the Old Testament, the rules of discipline for the Qumran community, and a long supplement to the Pentateuch, the Temple Scroll, among others. A Damascus Scroll, independently discovered earlier in the attic of a synagogue in Cairo, has been shown to be related to the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Part of the controversy surrounding the Dead Sea Scrolls has been to identify the nature of the community at Qumran. Most scholars identify them as Essenes, an ascetic sect of Judaism that drew apart from what they considered the contaminated mainstream of the Jewish faith. Espousing strict spiritual disciplines, including celibacy and ritual cleansings, the Essenes followed a Teacher of Righteousness, contrasted with the Wicked Priest, identified by most as the high priest of the Jerusalem temple. Dualist in thought, the scroll of the Battle of the Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness typifies their bi-polar thinking. Yet dualistic thought was prevalent in the world of Jesus' day, from Hellenists through gnostics, and of course Paul himself.
Although some scholars identify John the Baptist or even Paul with the Qumran community, no New Testament book has been found at Qumran, although some claim to find passages which resonate favorably with New Testament teachings. In fact, the most significant impact upon the Christian Church and biblical scholarship generally may be that Jesus' teachings were not as radical as has been thought, but were consistent with at least some contemporary factions of the Jewish faith.
Source:
. Shanks, Hershel, ed. Understanding The Dead Sea Scrolls: a Reader from the Biblical Archaeology Review. Random, 1992.