John C. Trever, Ph.D./Digital image, James E. Trever
THE GREAT ISAIAH SCROLL (1QIsaa). Perhaps the most famous of the Dead Sea Scrolls, this 23.5-foot scroll, dating to about 100 B.C.E., is the oldest and best-preserved copy of a book of the Hebrew Bible. But with its numerous mistakes and omissions, contextual changes, unusual spelling system and bad handwriting, it does not provide as much insight to today’s Bible texts as some of the other more incomplete or fragmented scrolls.