The Dead Sea Scrolls

I am going to see the Dead Sea Scrolls this weekend and I know it has been a while since we have discussed them in class, but I wanted to find out some more. As Foster said the scrolls include copies of every book in the Hebrew Bible, save Ester, and date over a millennium older than the 10th century text of the Hebrew Bible. Hows that for helping source criticism? The scrolls have answered questions of authorship and date. However, for every answered question, there was a new one. Some passages and Psalms are grouped differently than other manuscripts, and others have new psalms or passages. There is even evidence that the 3rd division of the cannon was sill in process at the time many of these scrolls were written.
Concerning the Gospels, there is a text that discusses a series of legal disagreements with the temple authority. This gives us, according to the dictionary, the only other resource besides the Bible that shows insight to what was happening in the temple in Jesus' day! This is just biblical text alone. There are hundreds of other non-biblical manuscripts discovered that give insight to culture and history of the time.
The Dead Sea Scrolls were an incredible find, to say the least, and translation work is till being done. I can't read them, but I am so excited to see these amazing manuscripts that are evidence to what I believe, and look forward to see what else they can teach us.