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• We see a pattern emerging, then, of the very widespread use of Aramaic in everyday use around the time of the New Testament - not just in Israel, but across the Middle East generally.
• We should not be at all surprised, therefore, to find that so many of the Dead Sea Scrolls were written in Aramaic. In a story that is now famous, the Dead Sea Scrolls were found in caves near Qumran in the 1940s and 1950s. These ancient manuscripts were found in pottery jars, preserved intact in the dry heat of the desert, undisturbed for almost two thousand years.
• Whereas the initial discoveries of the Dead Sea Scrolls were from the caves near Qumran, since then many other similar discoveries have taken place across Israel, to build up a much more comprehensive picture of the life and culture of these important times, around the time of Jesus.