Q 01/05

The Qumran caves where the scrolls were found lie in which modern territory?

A) Jordan

B) The West Bank

C) The Golan Heights

D) The Negev

Answer · why

B) The West Bank

The West Bank was under Jordanian rule when most caves were found, so the digs were co-led by Gerald Lankester Harding, head of Jordan's antiquities d...

Q 02/05

Which country governed Palestine when the first Dead Sea Scrolls were found near Qumran?

A) Britain

B) France

C) Jordan

D) Israel

Answer · why

A) Britain

Britain governed Palestine until May 1948; amid the regional turmoil that followed, a Syrian Orthodox archbishop smuggled four of the first scrolls ou...

Q 03/05

Who made the initial discovery of the scrolls?

A) Bedouin shepherds

B) French monks

C) American students

D) Israeli archaeologists

Answer · why

A) Bedouin shepherds

Bedouin shepherds of the Ta'amireh tribe found Cave 1; in the usual telling, one tossed a stone inside while hunting a stray and heard pottery shatter...

Q 04/05

Researchers have pieced the Qumran fragments into roughly how many different manuscripts?

A) About 10

B) About 100

C) About 1,000

D) About 10,000

Answer · why

C) About 1,000

About 1,000 manuscripts survive, mostly as scraps, and for some 40 years a team of fewer than a dozen scholars controlled who could study them.

Q 05/05

What showed looters raided a Qumran cave announced in 2017?

A) A 1950s newspaper

B) Iron pickaxe heads

C) Cigarette butts

D) A Jordanian coin

Answer · why

B) Iron pickaxe heads

Iron pickaxe heads from the 1950s were stored in its tunnel, and every jar there had been broken and emptied, so looters had beaten archaeologists to ...