The caves are located about 1.5 km (1 mi) west of the northwest shore of the Dead Sea, whence they derive their name. The 11 Qumran Caves lie in the immediate vicinity of the Hellenistic-period Jewish settlement at Khirbet Qumran in the eastern Judaean Desert, in the West Bank. Researchers have assembled a collection of 981 different manuscripts – discovered in 1946/47 and in 1956 – from 11 caves. However, a small number of well-preserved, almost intact manuscripts have survived – fewer than a dozen among those from the Qumran Caves. They represent the remnants of larger manuscripts damaged by natural causes or through human interference, with the vast majority holding only small scraps of text. Many thousands of written fragments have been discovered in the Dead Sea area. Israel's custody of the scrolls is disputed by Jordan and the Palestinian Authority on territorial, legal and humanitarian grounds – they were mostly discovered during the period of Jordanian control of the West Bank and captured by Israel in the 1967 Six Day War – whilst Israel's claims are primarily based on historical and religious grounds given their significance in Jewish history and in the heritage of Judaism. Almost all of the 15,000 scrolls and scroll fragments are held by Israel in the Shrine of the Book at the Israel Museum. At the same time they cast new light on the emergence of Christianity and of Rabbinic Judaism. Dating from the 3rd century BCE to the 1st century CE, the Dead Sea Scrolls are considered to be a keystone in the history of archaeology with great historical, religious, and linguistic significance because they include the oldest surviving manuscripts of entire books later included in the biblical canons, along with deuterocanonical and extra-biblical manuscripts which preserve evidence of the diversity of religious thought in late Second Temple Judaism. The Dead Sea Scrolls (also the Qumran Caves Scrolls) are ancient Jewish religious manuscripts discovered between 19 at the Qumran Caves in what was then Mandatory Palestine, near Ein Feshkha in the West Bank, on the northern shore of the Dead Sea.
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