Writings: JudaismThe Great Isaiah Scroll1 of 10

Writings: Judaism

The Great Isaiah Scroll

The Great Isaiah Scroll is a Hebrew parchment scroll of the whole book of Isaiah, found in 1947 in a cave near Qumran and held by the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. Handwriting points to the second century BCE, and radiocarbon ranges overlap that. Its text mostly agrees with the later Masoretic Text, and scholars differ on what its variants show.

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Three dates, kept apart

  1. The text's date: the tradition's view

    The statements consulted date the book of Isaiah by reign, generation, or century, not by calendar year, so this row is left blank. The Orthodox Union's entry on Isaiah places the prophet in the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah and into the start of Manasseh's reign, and the Talmud (Bava Batra 15a) says Hezekiah and his colleagues wrote the book. A Jewish Theological Seminary commentary by Benjamin Sommer (2018), one scholar's and not a Conservative statement, says the later chapters were written roughly a generation after the Babylonian destruction of the Temple. A Union for Reform Judaism commentary for young readers says some scholars place chapters 1 to 39 in the 8th century BCE and chapters 40 to 66 in the 6th. The Orthodox Union's entry on the Tanakh, the Conservative statement Emet Ve-Emunah (1988), and the Reform statements of 1976 and 1999 give no view on when Isaiah was written.

  2. The text's date: critical scholars' view

    about 740 to 540 BCE, the writing of the book's two main parts as Theodore Friedman dates them (in the Encyclopaedia Judaica: chapters 1 to 39 from the prophet's career, about 740 to 700 BCE, and chapters 40 to 66 from an unknown prophet of the Babylonian exile, about 540 BCE; the bar marks his span only, and some scholars place later layers of chapters 56 to 66 after it, in the early Persian period)

  3. This copy made

    150 to 100 BCE, when the scroll was copied, by handwriting (the Israel Museum gives about 125 BCE); radiocarbon dating at the University of Arizona gave 250 to 103 BCE at 76 percent probability or 356 to 291 BCE at 24 percent; a 2025 computer estimate of handwriting style gave 180 to 100 BCE

  4. This copy found

    1947, when Bedouin of the Ta'amra tribe found it in Cave 1 near Khirbet Qumran (Israel Museum); Francolino Goncalves writes that the first scrolls were found at the end of 1946 or the beginning of 1947

All four rows share one timeline. A row with no marker says why in words. How ancient texts are dated.

What it is

The Great Isaiah Scroll is a Hebrew scroll of the book of Isaiah, one of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the ancient manuscripts found in caves near the Dead Sea from 1947. Its 54 columns hold all 66 chapters. At 7.34 meters it is the largest and best preserved of the biblical scrolls and the only one almost complete, the Israel Museum says.1

Emanuel Tov counts 21 copies of Isaiah at Qumran, the settlement beside the caves, though he calls the count conjectural.2 The museum compares the scroll with the Masoretic Text, the standard Hebrew text of the Tanakh (the Hebrew Bible, named for its three parts: Torah, Prophets, and Writings). It says generations of sages known as Masoretes preserved that text, and it names the 10th century Aleppo Codex as the finest surviving example.13

How the copy was dated

Radiocarbon dating measures the carbon-14 left in once-living material and gives one or more ranges of years.45 It dates the animal that gave the parchment, not the writing.6 In 1995 a University of Arizona laboratory tested a sample from column 39 and gave 2141 years before present, plus or minus 32. At two standard deviations that calibrates to 250 to 103 BCE (76 percent) or 356 to 291 BCE (24 percent).7

By handwriting (paleography), F. M. Cross dated the writing to about 150 to 125 BCE, and N. Avigad to the second half of the second century BCE, somewhat later than the Nash Papyrus.7 The Israel Museum gives about 125 BCE, and Goncalves wrote that it was probably copied between 125 and 100 BCE.18 A 2025 study's computer model, trained on 24 radiocarbon-dated manuscripts, estimated both halves at 180 to 100 BCE.9 See how ancient texts are dated.

The text: its date and authorship

The strip marks the book of Isaiah as a whole. Its tradition row is blank: the statements consulted date the book by reign, generation, or century, not calendar year. The scholars' bar marks Friedman's span only.

The tradition's view

This column reports the tradition through the Talmud, Rashi, a reference work, movement websites, and two commentaries that give scholars' views. The Talmud says Hezekiah and his colleagues wrote Isaiah, and Rashi holds that Manasseh killed the prophet, who therefore did not write his own book.1011 The Encyclopaedia Judaica reports that the rabbis generally treated the book as one prophet's work.12 The Orthodox Union places Isaiah in the reigns of Uzziah to Hezekiah.13

In a Jewish Theological Seminary commentary (2018), Benjamin Sommer notes that the haftarah, the reading from the Prophets, on the seven Shabbatot of consolation comes from the last part of Isaiah. He holds that an unnamed prophet in exile, roughly a generation after the Temple's destruction, wrote those chapters.14 His is one scholar's commentary, not a Conservative statement. The Orthodox Union's entries on Isaiah and the Tanakh, the Conservative statement Emet Ve-Emunah (1988), and the Reform statements of 1976 and 1999 give no view on who wrote Isaiah.133151617 A Union for Reform Judaism commentary for young readers says some scholars believe two people wrote the book.18

Scholars of Isaiah: Hayes, Friedman, Barstad, Blenkinsopp, and Sweeney

Christine Hayes says in a lecture that Isaiah proper dates to the eighth century and into the early seventh century BCE, that chapters 40 to 55 were written after Jerusalem's destruction, and that parts of chapters 56 to 66 came after the exile. She adds that the later chapters lack biographical detail.19

Theodore Friedman holds, in the Encyclopaedia Judaica (2007), that the prophet's career ran from about 740 to 700 BCE. The entry calls the opinion of modern times virtually unanimous that an unknown prophet of the Babylonian exile, about 540 BCE, wrote chapters 40 to 66.12 The Israel Museum says modern scholarship reads Isaiah as an anthology.1

Brittany Kim, reviewing a book of essays, reports that Hans Barstad summarizes Joseph Blenkinsopp as reading chapters 56 to 66 as editorial layers completed in the early Persian period, and that Marvin Sweeney outlines the book with a major break after chapter 33.20

How it was found

Bedouin of the Ta'amra tribe found the first seven Dead Sea Scrolls by chance in 1947 in Cave 1, near Khirbet Qumran, the Israel Museum says. Goncalves puts the find at the end of 1946 or the start of 1947.218

Eliezer Lipa Sukenik bought three of the seven scrolls for the Hebrew University. Mar Athanasius Samuel, the Metropolitan of the Syrian Orthodox Church in Jerusalem, bought the other four, the Isaiah scroll among them. He took them to the United States, in 1948 according to the museum and in 1949 according to Tov. The museum says Sukenik's son, Yigael Yadin, brought them to Israel in 1954, and Tov writes that they were purchased on behalf of the State of Israel that year.212

The museum says the scrolls were entrusted to the Shrine of the Book Foundation and have been on display in the Shrine of the Book at the museum since 1965. The sources used here report no dispute over who holds the Isaiah scroll; the museum lists other Qumran fragments as held by the Israel Antiquities Authority, the Jordan Archaeological Museum in Amman, and other institutions.21

What it shows, and what it does not

It shows a nearly complete Hebrew Isaiah, copied about a thousand years before the oldest Tanakh manuscripts then known. The museum says its text generally agrees with the Masoretic Text, with variant readings it counts as well over 2,600; Goncalves counts a few hundred textual variants.18 Tov holds that this scroll is independent, not consistently close to any one text family, with so many secondary features that its value for rebuilding Isaiah's original wording is limited.22 Goncalves judged it to some extent a revised, updated edition, and Ulrich, as a reviewer reports, holds that it arguably keeps many superior readings although its language is later.823

It does not settle how fixed the Hebrew text was: Ulrich also holds, as the reviewer reports, that the Masoretic Text was one Hebrew form among many, selected by later Judaism, in his view not deliberately.23 Nor does it settle who wrote Isaiah, since Tov holds that the scrolls cannot show whether one prophet or two did.24

Scholars differ on whether one scribe or two copied it. Tov holds that two did, dividing the book near chapter 34, a scribal convenience and no evidence for a second prophet, and Popovic and colleagues write that two were at work.29 Goncalves wrote that a single hand copied it, and Ulrich and Flint, as a reviewer reports, hold that one scribe copied the whole book.825

See also

Sources

  1. Israel Museum, Jerusalem (text signed by Adolfo Roitman, curator of the Dead Sea Scrolls and head of the Shrine of the Book). The Great Isaiah Scroll (Digital Dead Sea Scrolls). The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, and Google, the whole page. Accessed 2026-11-06.
  2. Emanuel Tov. The Text of Isaiah at Qumran (chapter 5 of Hebrew Bible, Greek Bible, and Qumran: Collected Essays). Mohr Siebeck, Tubingen, 2008 (series Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism); the chapter as posted on Tov's own website, 2008, the whole chapter (16 pages, numbered 1 to 16 in the file). Accessed 2026-11-06.
  3. Orthodox Union. Tanakh (Judaism 101 glossary). Orthodox Union, glossary entry. Accessed 2026-10-29.
  4. Radiocarbon Laboratory, Nuclear Physics Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences. Principle of 14C dating. Nuclear Physics Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences. Accessed 2026-11-05.
  5. Radiocarbon Laboratory, Nuclear Physics Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences. Calibration (Principle of 14C dating). Nuclear Physics Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences. Accessed 2026-11-05.
  6. Cadbury Research Library, University of Birmingham. The Birmingham Qur'an manuscript: frequently asked questions. University of Birmingham. Accessed 2026-11-05.
  7. A. J. Timothy Jull, Douglas J. Donahue, Magen Broshi, and Emanuel Tov. Radiocarbon dating of scrolls and linen fragments from the Judean Desert. Radiocarbon 37, no. 1 (1995), pp. 11 to 19, 1995, pp. 11 to 19; Table 2 (p. 14) and the text on p. 13 for 1QIsaa; Appendix 1 for the handwriting estimates. Accessed 2026-11-06.
  8. Francolino J. Goncalves. Isaiah Scroll, The (Anchor Bible Dictionary, vol. 3, pp. 470 to 472), as reproduced on the Center for Online Judaic Studies. Anchor Bible Dictionary, ed. David Noel Freedman (Doubleday, New York, 1992); posted by the Center for Online Judaic Studies (COJS), 1992, vol. 3, pp. 470 to 472. Accessed 2026-11-06.
  9. Mladen Popovic, Maruf A. Dhali, Lambert Schomaker, and others. Dating ancient manuscripts using radiocarbon and AI-based writing style analysis. PLOS ONE 20, no. 6 (2025), e0323185 (open access; read on PubMed Central), 2025, the section on the Great Isaiah Scroll and Fig 2. Accessed 2026-11-06.
  10. Babylonian Talmud (William Davidson Edition). Bava Batra 15a. Sefaria, Bava Batra 15a. Accessed 2026-10-29.
  11. Rashi (Sefaria Community Translation). Rashi on Bava Batra 15a. Sefaria, Bava Batra 15a. Accessed 2026-11-06.
  12. Theodore Friedman, Harold Louis Ginsberg, Isaac Avishur, and others (Encyclopaedia Judaica). Isaiah. Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd ed. (Gale, 2007), via Encyclopedia.com, 2007, the sections 'Introduction', 'Survey of Views of the Authorship of Isaiah' (Friedman), and 'Differentiation between Chapters 1-39 and 40-66'. Accessed 2026-11-06.
  13. Orthodox Union. Yeshayahu (Judaism 101: leaders in biblical times). Orthodox Union, the whole entry. Accessed 2026-11-06.
  14. Benjamin D. Sommer (Jewish Theological Seminary). Would Our Mother Forget Us? (JTS Torah Commentary, for a Shabbat of consolation). The Jewish Theological Seminary, 2018, the opening paragraphs. Accessed 2026-11-06.
  15. Commission on the Philosophy of Conservative Judaism. Emet Ve-Emunah: Statement of Principles of Conservative Judaism. The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, The Rabbinical Assembly, and The United Synagogue of America, 1988, printed pages 18 to 26. Accessed 2026-10-29.
  16. Central Conference of American Rabbis. Reform Judaism: A Centenary Perspective. Central Conference of American Rabbis, 1976, section 3, Torah. Accessed 2026-10-28.
  17. Central Conference of American Rabbis. A Statement of Principles for Reform Judaism. Central Conference of American Rabbis, 1999, Torah. Accessed 2026-10-28.
  18. Faye Tillis Lewy (D'var Torah author), for the Union for Reform Judaism. Nitzavim for Tweens (Torah commentary, ReformJudaism.org). Union for Reform Judaism, the section 'The Prophet'. Accessed 2026-11-06.
  19. Christine Hayes. Introduction to the Old Testament (Hebrew Bible) (RLST 145), Lecture 19: Literary Prophecy: Perspectives on the Exile. Open Yale Courses, Yale University, transcript. Accessed 2026-10-28.
  20. Brittany Kim (Roberts Wesleyan College). Review of Richard J. Bautch and J. Todd Hibbard (eds.), The Book of Isaiah: Enduring Questions Answered Anew (Essays Honoring Joseph Blenkinsopp). Journal of Hebrew Scriptures 15 (2015), 2015, the whole review. Accessed 2026-11-06.
  21. Israel Museum, Jerusalem. Discovery (Digital Dead Sea Scrolls). The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, and Google, the whole page. Accessed 2026-11-06.
  22. Emanuel Tov. The Biblical Texts from the Judean Desert: An Overview and Analysis (chapter 10 of Hebrew Bible, Greek Bible, and Qumran: Collected Essays). Mohr Siebeck, Tubingen, 2008 (series Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism); the chapter as posted on Tov's own website, 2008, pp. 16 and 23 to 29 of the file. Accessed 2026-11-06.
  23. David Joseph Sigrist. Review of Eugene Ulrich, The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Developmental Composition of the Bible (Brill, 2015). Ancient Jew Review (May 2017), 2017, the whole review. Accessed 2026-11-06.
  24. Emanuel Tov. Understanding the Text of the Bible 65 Years after the Discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Open Theology 1 (2014), pp. 89 to 96 (De Gruyter Open; the article as posted on Tov's website), 2014, pp. 89 to 96. Accessed 2026-11-06.
  25. Robert D. Holmstedt (University of Toronto). Review of Eugene Ulrich and Peter W. Flint, Qumran Cave 1, II: The Isaiah Scrolls (Discoveries in the Judaean Desert XXXII, Oxford: Clarendon, 2010). Journal of Hebrew Scriptures 12 (2012), 2012, the whole review. Accessed 2026-11-06.