Qumran was home to a strict religious community near the Dead Sea. Archaeological evidence suggests communal living and rigid rules. Many scholars associate the site with the Essenes. The group ...

It was in 1947 that the first discoveries of the remarkable manuscripts, now commonly known as the Dead Sea Scrolls, were made. Already the amount of literature concerned with these scrolls has grown ...

The Essenes were a Jewish sect that flourished around the end of the Second Temple Period, i.e. between the 2nd century BC and the 1st century AD. The main source of information regarding this ...

(RNS) Biblical breastplates, menacing nuns and an apocalyptic Jewish sect. What is behind all that religious jazz in the second episode of “Dig," which aired Thursday (March 12) on the USA Network?

The Dead Sea Scrolls, discovered in the 1940s near Qumran, represent one of archaeology’s greatest finds. They include ancient biblical texts and religious writings dating back over 2,000 years, yet ...

In Luke 1:31-35, an angel tells the Virgin Mary, “And now you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the son of the Most High, the ...

At some point rather early in the spring of 1947, a Bedouin boy called Muhammed the Wolf was minding some goats near a cliff on the western shore of the Dead Sea. Climbing up after one that had ...

The Dead Sea Scrolls, one of the most significant archaeological discoveries of the 20th century, have fascinated scholars and historians for decades. Their impact on Judaism and early Christianity ...

Israeli archaeologist yuval peleg halts his jeep where the jagged Judean hills peter out into a jumble of boulders. Before us, across the flat-calm Dead Sea, the sun rises over the mountains of Jordan ...

While Judaism and the Jewish People have always been one religion and one nation; their one wholeness has always been the sum of many very different parts. In Biblical days, the People of Israel were ...