The Map That Changed Everything

In 1947, a Bedouin shepherd named Muhammad edh-Dhib tossed a stone into a cave near the Dead Sea and heard the crack of shattering pottery. Inside those clay jars lay the Dead Sea Scrolls — manuscripts of Isaiah, Deuteronomy, and dozens of other texts, preserved for over two thousand years in the dry Qumran heat. Scholars had long questioned whether the Hebrew scriptures had been corrupted over centuries of copying.…