Table of Contents Introduction Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 About Farms Back to main page

Latter-day Saints love ancient religious records. We have already received the Bible, Book of Mormon, and Pearl of Great Price, and we look forward with anticipation to receiving the "words of the lost tribes of Israel" (2 Nephi 29:13), to the unsealing of a large portion of the golden plates, and to the restoration of other ancient texts authored by Adam, Enoch, Joseph, and others.

It was no wonder, then, that since the 1947 discovery of ancient scrolls hidden in caves along the shores of the Dead Sea, many Latter-day Saints have been fascinated by the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Although these scrolls do not contain the records we await, they do help answer some important questions related to the gospel: How has the Bible been transmitted to our day? What did the Jews believe in the years between the end of the Old Testament and the time of Christ? How much of the full gospel was known by these people before the coming of Christ?

The essays in this collection help to answer these and other questions. They give an overview of the history of the scrolls, compare the scrolls and their writers to the Book of Mormon and its authors, and discuss what the scrolls teach about topics like the Messiah and the plan of salvation. The collection also includes a description of how high technology is aiding in all aspects of the translation of the scrolls, from DNA analysis to computerization. The essays are written by BYU faculty who are members of the international team of scroll editors, world-renowned scroll scholar Florentino García Martínez, and other researchers at BYU and FARMS.