The Copper Scroll is one of the Dead Sea Scrolls found in Cave 3 near Khirbet Qumran. Unlike the others, it is not a literary work, but a list of 64 places where various items of gold and silver were buried or hidden. It differs from the other scrolls in its Hebrew, its orthography, palaeography and date. Since 2013, the Copper Scroll has been on display at the newly opened Jordan Museum in Amman.
About Copper Scroll in brief
The Copper Scroll is one of the Dead Sea Scrolls found in Cave 3 near Khirbet Qumran. Unlike the others, it is not a literary work, but a list of 64 places where various items of gold and silver were buried or hidden. It differs from the other scrolls in its Hebrew, its orthography, palaeography and date. Since 2013, the Copper Scroll has been on display at the newly opened Jordan Museum in Amman after being moved from its previous home, the Jordan Archaeological Museum on Amman’s Citadel Hill. A new facsimile of the scroll by Facsimile Editions of London was announced as being in production in 2014. The scroll, on two rolls of copper, was found on March 14, 1952 at the back of Cave 3 at Qum Ran. It was the last of 15 scrolls discovered in the cave, and is thus referred to as 3Q15. The corroded metal could not be unrolled by conventional means and so the Jordanian government sent it to Manchester University’s College of Technology in England for it to be cut into sections. The first editor assigned for the transcribed text was Józef Milik. Scholarly estimates of the probable date range of The Copper Scroll vary.
F. M. Cross proposed the period of 25–75 CE on paleographical grounds, while W.F. Albright suggested 70–135 CE. Manfred Lehmann put forward a similar date range, arguing that the treasure was principally the money accumulated between the First Jewish–Roman War and the Bar Kokhba revolt, while the temple lay in ruins. Whereas Emile Puech argued that the deposit could not have been placed behind 40 jars of the Copper scroll, so the scroll originated around 70 CE. While Mishnaic writing is unusual, the scroll is written in a style similar to that of Mishnaa, which was written after the destruction of Jerusalem in 100 CE. If Milik’s dating is correct, it would mean that the scroll did not come from the Qmran community because his dating puts the scroll well after the destroyed settlement. If the scroll was destroyed after 100 CE, nearly a generation after the Destruction of Jerusalem, it was nearly a century after the Scroll was written. It is believed to have been written by the Essenes, but Milik now believes that it was a separate deposit, separated by a lapse in time.
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This page is based on the article Copper Scroll published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 30, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
