The Glory of Heaven

In the spring of 1947, an Arab shepherd boy was grazing his flock in the hills bordering the western shore of the Dead Sea. As most boys of his age, he began throwing rocks to pass the time. Suddenly he heard a loud crash like the sound of breaking glass. Leaving his flocks to investigate, he entered a cave and there found a variety of clay jars filled with scrolls. As he was not sure what he had found, the boy took a couple of the scrolls and proceeded to lead his flock home for the night, occasionally using the scrolls to hit those animals that strayed. In the coming days he would show his find to others who didn’t think very much of his discovery. In fact because the scrolls were written in Hebrew, most thought they were stolen and so they didn’t want anything to do with them. Eventually—in fact, months later—one of the scrolls ended up at the American Oriental Society, which identified the scroll as a manuscript of Isaiah. Amazing, as that shepherd boy led his flock with the scrolls little did he know that he held in his hand one of the most important biblical discoveries of this century: The Dead Sea Scrolls.