The Dead Sea Scrolls are not all written in Hebrew.

The manuscripts preserve more than one language because they emerged from a religious and cultural world in which different languages circulated alongside one another.

Language and content are separate questions: the collection includes biblical manuscripts and other religious works, not simply one book copied in three languages.

Most surviving material consists of fragments, so identifying a text's language is only one stage in reconstructing its wording, date and relationship to other manuscripts.

The best-known Dead Sea Scrolls were found in caves near Qumran, close to the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea. The initial discovery in 1947 was followed by further finds, with the principal Qumran discoveries extending through 1956. These modern discovery dates should not be confused with the manuscripts' ages: the writings largely come from the last centuries BCE and the first century CE.

According to the Israel Antiquities Authority's introduction to the collection, Hebrew is the most frequently used language, about 15 percent of the scrolls are in Aramaic, and several are in Greek. Those proportions are more informative than merely listing three languages as though each were equally represented. Hebrew dominates, Aramaic forms a substantial minority, and Greek is present on a smaller scale.

Aramaic was widely used in the ancient Near East, while Greek spread through the eastern Mediterranean in the Hellenistic period and remained important under Roman rule. Their presence among the scrolls places the collection within that wider linguistic environment. It does not require imagining a single writer who used all three languages, or assuming that every member of an ancient community read each language equally well.

The Qumran material includes copies of works now found in the Hebrew Bible and other religious writings circulating during the Second Temple period. Some texts interpret scripture; others concern religious practice, community organisation or expectations about the future. Calling the entire collection a Bible would therefore be misleading. The manuscripts illuminate a broader body of literature and religious thought.

Physical survival also varies greatly. A few scrolls are nearly complete, but much of the collection survives in thousands of fragments. Most material is parchment, with some papyrus, while the unusual Copper Scroll carries its text on metal. The word scroll can suggest a neat, readable roll, yet scholars frequently work with small, damaged pieces that require careful conservation and comparison.

A manuscript's language is not identical to the script used to write it. Language concerns the words and grammar; script concerns the written signs. Nor does identifying the language settle the date or authorship. Scholars combine linguistic evidence with handwriting, material study and archaeological context. That distinction helps explain why a short description such as 'Hebrew scroll' cannot communicate everything known about a manuscript.

The term Dead Sea Scrolls can also cover discoveries beyond the Qumran caves, including documents from other sites in the Judean Desert. Keeping the geographical scope clear avoids mixing different groups of texts into one undifferentiated library. The headline claim here concerns the Qumran collection specifically, where Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek are all attested, although very unequally represented.

The Dead Sea Scrolls are a collection, not one continuous book with one language and one author. Their differences matter because manuscripts preserve a range of texts, writing practices, and historical circumstances. A label for the collection should not erase variation between individual items.

The languages also provide evidence for the cultural setting of the manuscripts. Their presence does not mean every text was translated into every language represented. Describing a multilingual collection is different from describing a parallel translation like the Rosetta Stone.