Before the Church · c. 150–100 BC
The Temple Scroll
11QT
Anonymous
What it is
The longest of the Dead Sea Scrolls, rewriting the law with God speaking in the first person throughout — no Moses as intermediary. It specifies a temple with three concentric courts that was never built, a calendar of new festivals, and a law for the king limiting his army and forbidding him more than one wife.
Why it lasted
A complete alternative Torah, written as though it were the original. It is the strongest evidence that at least one group believed the Pentateuch as received had been tampered with.
Scripture it works from
Where to read it
Public domain and free to read in full, though not held here. The archives below have it.
These open a search on each archive rather than a direct link, which is the honest way to point at an edition nobody here has checked line by line.
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