Uncovered in Jerusalem, 9 tiny unopened Dead Sea Scrolls

Uncovered in Jerusalem, 

9 tiny unopened Dead Sea Scrolls

Researcher finds tantalizing tefillin parchments
from Second Temple era, overlooked for decades
and unread for 2,000 years

BY ILAN BEN ZION March 12, 2014


Ilan Ben Zion Ilan Ben Zion is a news editor at The Times of Israel. 

He holds a Masters degree in Diplomacy from … [More]
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They’re not much larger than lentils, but size doesn’t minimize the 

potential significance of nine newfound Dead Sea Scrolls that have 

lain unopened for the better part of six decades.

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An Israeli scholar turned up the previously unexamined parchments, 

which had escaped the notice of academics and archaeologists as 

they focused on their other extraordinary finds in the 1950s. Once 

opened, the minuscule phylactery parchments from Qumran, while 

unlikely to yield any shattering historic, linguistic or religious 

breakthroughs, could shed new light on the religious practices of 

Second Temple Judaism.


The Israel Antiquities Authority has been tasked with unraveling 

and preserving the new discoveries — an acutely sensitive 

process and one which the IAA says it will conduct painstakingly, 

and only after conducting considerable preparatory research.

Phylacteries, known in Judaism by the Hebrew term tefillin, are 

pairs of leather cases containing biblical passages from the books 

of Exodus and Deuteronomy. One case is bound by leather thongs 

to the head and one to the arm during morning prayers, as prescribed 

by rabbinic interpretation of the Bible. The case worn on the head 

contains four scrolls in individual compartments, while the arm 

phylactery holds one scroll.

The interior of the Shrine of the book, the home of the 

Dead Sea Scrolls at the Israel Museum. (photo credit: Flash90)

At least two dozen tefillin scroll fragments were known to have 

been found during excavations of the limestone caves overlooking 

the Dead Sea at Qumran in the 1950s (several phylactery boxes 

and straps were unearthed as well). They were among the 

world-famous cache of thousands of scrolls and scroll fragments 

containing biblical and sectarian texts from the Second Temple 

period. Since their discovery, the Qumran scrolls have been housed 

at the Israel Museum, and scholars have pored over the ancient 

documents and opened a window into ancient Jewish theology.

But these nine latest tiny scrolls had been overlooked — until now.

Dr. Yonatan Adler, a lecturer at Ariel University and a 

post-doctoral researcher on Qumran tefillin at Hebrew University, 

was searching through the Israel Antiquities Authority’s 

climate-controlled storerooms in the Har Hotzvim neighborhood 

of Jerusalem in May 2013. There he found a phylactery case from 

Qumran among the organic artifacts stored in climate-controlled 

warehouses. Suspecting the case could contain a heretofore 

undocumented scroll, he had it scanned by an MRI at 

Shaare Zedek Hospital. The analysis suggested there might 

indeed be an unseen parchment inside.

While that analysis has yet to be confirmed, Adler was 

spurred on by the discovery, and in December visited the 

Dead Sea Scroll labs at the Israel Museum. There he found 

two tiny scrolls inside the compartments of a tefillin case 

that had been documented but then put aside some time 

after 1952. The scrolls were never photographed or 

examined, and so have remained bound inside the leather 

box for roughly 2,000 years.

Then, just last month, Adler told The Times of Israel 

he “found a number of fragments of tefillin cases from 

Qumran Cave 4, together with seven rolled-up tefillin 

slips” which had never been opened.

Dr. Yonatan Adler of Ariel University 

(photo credit: Devorah Adler)

“Either they didn’t realize that these were

 also scrolls, or they didn’t know how to 

open them,” Pnina Shor, head of the IAA’s 

Department of Artefact Treatment and 

Conservation, explained.

Józef Tadeusz Milik, the most prolific publisher 

of the scrolls after their discovery last century, 

reported on the Cave 4 tefillin case finds but he 

“didn’t say why they didn’t open them, [and] he 

also didn’t say they were scrolls,” even though 

the parchments were identified as part of tefillin 

assemblage, she said.

Shor and her team have managed the painstaking

task of maintaining the thousands of scroll 

fragments found at Qumran, removing them 

from the glass casings in which they were 

entombed in the 1950s and mounting them on 

fine cloth mesh, then digitizing each minute scrap 

with multi-spectral photography. Each scroll 

fragment is photographed at 56 different exposures 

— 28 per side (as some scrolls have writing on 

both) — in 12 different wavelengths ranging as 

far as the infrared. The team will be tasked with 

a similar mission with the new scrolls once 

they’ve been opened.

Dead Sea Scroll expert Eibert Tigchelaar of the 

University of Leuven in Belgium said that the fact 

that these nine scrolls went undetected for so long 

should not come as a surprise, considering the 

scrolls’ complicated administrative history (which 

includes a change in sovereignty in 1967). 

”Things physically remained somewhere, but 

administratively were forgotten,” Tigchelaar said.

Moreover, “confronted with 10,000 or more 

fragments from Cave 4, of which the last were 

only published a few years ago, there was little 

attention [paid] to those tefillin that might not be 

opened at all,” he said.

None of the phylacteries has been radiocarbon 

dated, but the cache of scrolls and religious objects 

from the caves at Qumran date from the second 

and first centuries BCE and first century CE — a 

critical time in the development of Judaism and 

early Christianity.

Like many of the finds at Qumran, some of the 

tefillin slips that have previously been opened have 

yielded astonishing differences from the standard 

Rabbinic text known as the Masoretic.

“Some tefillin use a spelling very close to the traditional 

one, [but] there are several tefillin that use an extreme 

form of divergent spelling that also occurs in many 

other scrolls,” such as additional letters in possessive 

suffixes, Tigchelaar said.

Seven recently rediscovered unopened tefillin 

scrolls from Qumran. (photo credit: Shai Halevi 

via Israel Antiquities Authority)

Professor Lawrence Schiffman, a vice provost at 

Yeshiva University and expert on Second Temple 

Judaism, explained that some of the tefillin texts from 

Qumran were identical to those used today, but others 

have the same text with additional passages, extended 

to include the Ten Commandments. He also 

pointed out that it would be interesting to see the 

order in which the scrolls were placed inside the 

tefillin compartments — a practice debated by 

rabbis for centuries.

“From my point of view, the most significant thing 

about all of this is that they actually have tefillin from 

2,100 and plus years ago,” Schiffman said of the

 Dead Sea Scrolls generally. The continuity of 

phylactery traditions — over the centuries and 

across the various sects that comprised Second Temple 

Jewry — was something he found remarkable.

“We have to be prepared for surprises,” Professor 

Hindy Najman of Yale University said, of the new 

discoveries. “On the one hand there’s tremendous 

continuity between what we have found among the 

Dead Sea Scrolls — liturgically, ritually and textually 

— and contemporaneous and later forms of Judaism. 

But there’s also tremendous possibility for variegated 

practices and a complex constellation of different 

practices, different influences, different ways of 

thinking about tefillin.”

Tefillin cases from Qumran 

(photo credit: Clara Amit via Israel Antiquities Authority)

Schiffman, however, said he doesn’t expect 

any “bombshells” emerging from the new scrolls 

that will “overturn the concepts that we have.”

“Given the amount of research that’s been 

done… important discoveries like this don’t 

overturn previous ideas,” he said. “We’re going 

to be able to augment what we know about the 

tefillin already.”

Tigchelaar concurred, saying that the Dead Sea Scrolls 

in general, and these tefillin in particular, are important 

not because they would shed light on one particular 

sect during the Second Temple Era, but because 

they demonstrate that rabbinic practices had deeper roots.

“Whether one wants to emphasize the continuity, 

or the differences, is another thing,” he said.

Shor will be in charge of the project of meticulously 

unraveling the newfound scrolls and ensuring their preservation.

“We’re going to do it slowly, but we’ll first consult 

with all of our experts about how to go about this,” 

she said, reluctant to say when the process would 

commence. “We need to do a lot of research before 

we start doing this.”

A single tefillin scroll found in phylacteries at Qumran. 

(photo credit: Shai Halevi via Israel Antiquities Authority)

Uncovered in Jerusalem, 9 tiny unopened Dead Sea Scrolls
Researcher finds tantalizing tefillin parchments from 

Second Temple era, overlooked for decades and 

unread for 2,000 years.

Read more: Uncovered in Jerusalem, 9 tiny unopened 

Dead Sea Scrolls | The Times of Israel 

http://www.timesofisrael.com/nine-tiny-new-dead-

sea-scrolls-come-to-light/#ixzz2vm8fwaVN
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Read more: Uncovered in Jerusalem, 9 tiny unopened 

Dead Sea Scrolls | The Times of Israel 

http://www.timesofisrael.com/nine-tiny-new-dead-

sea-scrolls-come-to-light/#ixzz2vm8YDsJx
Follow us: @timesofisrael on Twitter | 

timesofisrael on Facebook