Topic
Hebrew manuscripts found near the Dead Sea from 1947, dated from about 250 BC to AD 70.
What it means
The scrolls include almost every book of the Hebrew Bible. The great Isaiah scroll is about a thousand years older than the earlier manuscripts known before it, and differs from them in small ways. They also include sectarian writings.
What the sources say
Muslim writers have used them in two directions: as showing that the Hebrew text was transmitted with care, which some say answers the charge of wholesale alteration, and as showing variants. The Quran’s own claim concerns the Torah that Moses was given and the Jews’ “distortion of words” (4:46), which scholars read in several ways (see Tahrif).