MORE than 70 years after being discovered, a scientist has deciphered an ancient message from the final Dead Sea Scrolls.
Dubbed the Cryptic B manuscripts, the two heavily damaged fragments labelled 4Q362 and 4Q363 were long thought “impossible” to read, due to containing an unfamiliar alphabet.
Up for the challenge, researcher Emmanuel Oliveiro from the University of Groningen in The Netherlands found the cryptic letters corresponded consistently with the Hebrew alphabet.
The researcher took just two months to crack the code, saying: “I told my friends and wife that I am going to try this and they’re like, you could be stuck here for 40 years and never crack the code”.
“And what do you hope to find anyway, a secret falafel recipe? But once I saw it – I think it was quite fast.”
The deciphered fragments revealed biblical phrases and themes linked to the end of days, with the divine judgement, the coming of the Messiah and the destiny of Israel making special mentions.
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Oliveiro translated numerous phrases and names, including references to Yisrael (Israel), Judah, Jacob and Elohim (another word for God).
“A handful of manuscripts [were] written completely in paleo-Hebrew, and paleo-Hebrew also appears in a number of manuscripts written in standard script,” Olveiro told Haaretz.
The manuscripts were written by the Qumran, a Jewish community that lived near the Dead Sea, dating back more than two millennia.
The sect was known for preserving religious texts, with subsequent writings revealing Jewish beliefs, as well as ritual practices and prophetic traditions and links to early Christianity.
The surviving tiny and fragile fragments of the Cryptic B manuscripts were exclusively written in the newly translated cipher, where many of the pieces of text were left damaged.
The leather they were written on has cracked, darkened and frayed over centuries, with some pieces showing margins, stitching holes and wrinkles.
The letters were written in black ink using fine or medium-tipped pens.
The shapes, proportions and spacing between letters is inconsistent and included corrections and double tracing.
When compared, the manuscripts displayed significant variation between each fragment and both texts.
These differences highlighted the irregular scribal execution of Cryptic B.
The messaging in 4Q362 has been translated as religious in nature, reflecting numerous biblical phrases and themes.
Fragment 21 speaks of Elohim and your glory, while fragment 18 references “the tents of Jacob”.
These phrases are echoed in Jeremiah 20:18 and Malachi 2:12.
Judah is also present in these passages – where in Jeremiah 20:18, the restoration of Israel is promised after judgement.
The passage promises that God will return their fortunes and rebuild cities, symbolising hope and future renewal.
Malachi 2:12 warns against adultery, and focuses on the importance of remaining loyal to the Hebrew community.
The manuscripts don’t directly quote these passages; however, the language and themes suggest an affinity with prophetic judgements and promises that are common in the biblical traditions.
The fragments also reference dates and rulers, including references to “the second year”, and “the fifth month”, believed to reflect specific historical or prophetic conventions, like those found in biblical texts.
A mysterious grave is mentioned in both fragments two and 14 of 4Q362.
Mentions of graves do appear in the Bible; however, none match with the description of the grave in the fragments.
Oliveiro said the word for “signposts” in fragment 14 could also translate to tombstone – points to a potential connection.
The second manuscript – 4Q363 – was more difficult to interpret, as a repeated phrase appears twice.
The translation makes it unclear whether it refers to “her daughters” or “her villages”.
Benayahu – a common name from the time – is mentioned; however, its frequency in other texts has made identification difficult.
Oliveiro is so far uncertain as to why these specific messages were encoded into the manuscripts, however he suggested they could be symbolic or serve a ritualistic purpose.
The unfamiliar alphabet could mean the original scribes had meant the manuscripts for a specific audience, such as priestly elites or scribe initiates.
“If you could read it, you had access to these manuscripts and were probably of a certain class or ranking within this pious community,” Oliveiro said.
“Mono-substitution is very powerful but the weakness of single substitution is that a language has patterns, so if you find the pattern, you can crack the substitution code – which is what I did here.”
The alphabetic variation would have enhanced the text’s sacred status without changing the meaning.
While the message of Cryptic B is relatively simple, its complexity lies in the more deliberate distortion of the letter shapes.
They were made to appear unreadable for centuries, despite containing no hidden meaning or mystical message.
What are the Dead Sea Scrolls
The Dead Sea Scrolls are ancient manuscripts that were discovered in 11 caves near the West Bank between 1947 and 1956.
They comprise some of the oldest surviving biblical manuscripts.
The writings were found on parchment, papyrus and copper.
The scrolls were written in Hebrew, Aramaic and sometimes in Greek, and depict early Jewish life, both just before and during the time Jesus walked the earth.
Cryptic A was successfully translated in 1955.
Cryptic B has remained a mystery since its discovery.
The manuscript was written with strange symbols and inconsistent handwriting, making the tiny fragments that survived the test of time increasingly difficult to decipher.
Many of the pieces from Cryptic B were damaged, with some measuring just millimetres in width.
