The discovery of the 2,000-year-old Dead Sea Scrolls had an incomparable impact on the historical understanding of Judaism and Christianity. “Piecing together” scroll fragments is like solving jigsaw puzzles with an unknown number of missing parts. We used the fact that most scrolls are made from animal skins to “fingerprint” pieces based on DNA sequences. Genetic sorting of the scrolls illuminates their textual relationship and historical significance. Disambiguating the contested relationship between Jeremiah fragments supplies evidence that some scrolls were brought to the Qumran caves from elsewhere; significantly, they demonstrate that divergent versions of Jeremiah circulated in parallel throughout Israel (ancient Judea). Similarly, patterns discovered in non-biblical scrolls, particularly the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice, suggest that the Qumran scrolls represent the broader cultural milieu of the period. Finally, genetic analysis divorces debated fragments from the Qumran scrolls. Our study demonstrates that interdisciplinary approaches enrich the scholar’s toolkit.

拥有2000年历史的死海古卷的发现对犹太教和基督教的历史理解产生了无与伦比的影响。“拼凑在一起”的滚动碎片就像解决拼图，其中缺少未知数量的零件。我们利用了这样一个事实，即大多数卷轴都是由动物的皮肤制成的，并基于DNA序列“指纹化”。卷轴的遗传排序阐明了它们的文字关系和历史意义。消除耶利米碎片之间存在争议的关系的歧义提供了证据，表明一些古卷从其他地方被带到了昆兰洞穴。重要的是，他们证明了不同版本的耶利米在整个以色列（古犹太）并行传播。同样，在非圣经卷轴中发现的模式，尤其是安息日牺牲之歌表明，古兰经卷轴代表了该时期更广泛的文化环境。最后，遗传分析与古兰经书卷中有争议的片段离婚了。我们的研究表明，跨学科方法丰富了学者的工具包。