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Manuscript

Great Isaiah Scroll

Also known as 1QIsaᵃ · 1Q Isa-a · Qumran Isaiah Scroll
dead-sea-scrollstextual-criticismold-testament

Summary

The oldest substantially complete Hebrew manuscript of the book of Isaiah; found at Qumran among the Dead Sea Scrolls.

  • Copied Late second century BC (c. 125 BC), on the handwriting.
  • Written in hebrew on parchment.
  • Kept at Shrine of the Book, Israel Museum, Jerusalem.
  • Contains Isaiah.
  • Named in 1 of the places your Bible carries a footnote.
A section of the Great Isaiah Scroll showing the Hebrew text of Isaiah 53 on aged parchment
The Great Isaiah Scroll at Isaiah 53: photograph Ardon Bar-Hama, public domain

Sources (3)

  1. Israel Museum: Great Isaiah Scroll digital facsimile · accessed 2026-04-17Primary digital source from holding institution.
  2. Wikipedia: Great Isaiah Scroll · accessed 2026-04-17CC-BY-SA.
  3. Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library · accessed 2026-04-17Institutional digital archive.

What it is

The Great Isaiah Scroll (1QIsaᵃ) is one of the seven Dead Sea Scrolls originally discovered in 1947 in Cave 1 at Qumran, near the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea. It is the oldest substantially complete Hebrew manuscript of any biblical book known; it contains all 66 chapters of Isaiah. Paleographic analysis places it in the late 2nd century BCE. It is written on 17 sheets of parchment stitched into a single scroll about 24 feet long.

The text it preserves is broadly consistent with the much later Masoretic Text used as the basis of all printed Hebrew Bibles, while also containing many orthographic variants and a handful of substantive differences — providing a landmark case-study for the transmission of the Hebrew biblical text across roughly a millennium.

It is now held at the Shrine of the Book, Israel Museum, Jerusalem, and has been made freely available online by the Israel Museum in a high-resolution digital facsimile.

Manuscript details
Date
Late second century BC (c. 125 BC), on the handwriting
Language
Hebrew
Script
Square Hebrew (Aramaic square script)
Material
Parchment
Held at
Shrine of the Book, Israel Museum, Jerusalem
Found
1947
Found at
Cave 1, Qumran, near the Dead Sea
Contains
Isaiah
Why it matters
The Great Isaiah Scroll is arguably the single most important manuscript for the study of the transmission of the Hebrew Old Testament. Before its discovery, the oldest substantially complete Hebrew biblical manuscripts were medieval (the Aleppo Codex and Leningrad Codex, c. 10th century CE). 1QIsaᵃ predates those by over a thousand years, yet its text corresponds very closely to them — powerful evidence for the stability of the Masoretic text tradition. It also provides early manuscript witness to some of the Christian tradition's most-cited messianic prophecy passages, including Isaiah 7:14, 9:6, and 52:13–53:12.

Where this witness is read

The words used here: Masoretic Text, codex
Masoretic Text
the Hebrew Bible copied and pointed by Jewish scribes, the text the KJV and the ASV translate.
codex
a book with leaves and a spine, the form that replaced the scroll.

The KJV and the ASV translate the Hebrew Masoretic Text. Where Great Isaiah Scroll reads differently, the footnote in your Bible is pointing here.

Where the manuscripts differ, all 15 places →Every handwritten copy, shelved and in date order →