Bible Synapse
Great Psalms Scroll
Manuscript · c. AD 30–50 · Bible manuscripts · also called Psalms Scroll, 11Q5, 11QPsa
See it on the map and timeline
- Date
- c. AD 30–50 (the copying (estimate from the handwriting))
- Found
- Qumran Cave 11, near the Dead Sea, 1956. Found by Ta’amireh Bedouin in Cave 11 early in 1956 and bought by the Palestine Archaeological Museum in Jerusalem. It was unrolled in 1961 and published by James A. Sanders in 1965.
- Now
- Israel Antiquities Authority (Dead Sea Scrolls collection), Jerusalem
- Passages
- Psalms 145:1–21, 1 Samuel 16:11–13, 1 Samuel 17:23
What it is
A scroll of leather sheets, about 4.25 metres long, with parts of some 40 psalms of the biblical Psalter, mostly from its last third, in an unusual order. Mixed with them are psalms and hymns that are not in the Hebrew Bible, and a prose note crediting David with 3,600 psalms and hundreds of other songs. The divine name is written in the old Hebrew script, unlike the rest of the text.
How it connects to the Bible
Its Psalm 145 adds a refrain after every verse and includes a line for the letter nun, which is missing from the acrostic in the standard Hebrew text; the Septuagint has that line too, and some modern Bibles print it after verse 13. It also contains Psalm 151 in Hebrew, in two parts, recalling David as the youngest son who kept his father’s sheep and was anointed by Samuel, as in 1 Samuel 16. The badly damaged second part breaks off after David sees a Philistine shouting defiance from the enemy ranks, as Goliath does in 1 Samuel 17.
What scholars debate
Scholars disagree whether it is an early form of the biblical Book of Psalms, whose later part may not yet have been fixed, or a collection for worship drawn from it.