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• Therefore, when people look for the oldest known manuscripts and fragments of the Holy Bible, whether the Old Testament or the New Testament, we should not expect to find anything in Israel, dating to the first and second centuries. The Romans systematically destroyed all Hebrew and Aramaic documents they could find, whether belonging to Jews or Christians (the early converts from Judaism). While many manuscripts were stored away safely in the numerous caves around the Dead Sea, to become the Dead Sea Scrolls that we know of today, the earliest fragments of the Old and New Testaments often arise outside of Israel.
• And so, the destruction of A.D. 70 was utterly devastating. It resulted in the destruction of the Temple, the fall of Jerusalem to the Romans, and the loss of Jewish life on a scale that is almost impossible to comprehend.