Extremely Limited User
– Conveys and understands only general
meaning in very familiar situations. Frequent breakdowns in
communication occur.
6
NOTE COMPLETION
TEST 1 READING PASSAGE 1
You should spend about 20 minutes on
Questions 1-5
which are based on
Reading Passage 1 below.
[Note: This is an extract from READING PASSAGE 1 about The Dead Sea
Scrolls]
In late 1946 or early 1947, three Bedouin teenagers were tending their goats and
sheep near the ancient settlement of Qumran, located on the northwest shore
of the Dead Sea in what is now known as the West Bank. One of these young
shepherds tossed a rock into an opening on the side of a cliff and was surprised
to hear a shattering sound. He and his companions later entered the cave and
stumbled across a collection of large clay jars, seven of which contained scrolls
with writing on them. The teenagers took the seven scrolls to a nearby town where
they were sold for a small sum to a local antiquities dealer. Word of the find spread,
and Bedouins and archaeologists eventually unearthed tens of thousands of
additional scroll fragments from 10 nearby caves; together they make up between
800 and 900 manuscripts. It soon became clear that this was one of the greatest
archaeological discoveries ever made.
The origin of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were written around 2,000 years ago
between 150 BCE and 70 CE, is still the subject of scholarly debate even today.
According to the prevailing theory, they are the work of a population that inhabited
the area until Roman troops destroyed the settlement around 70 CE. The area
was known as Judea at that time, and the people are thought to have belonged to
a group called the Essenes, a devout Jewish sect.
The majority of the texts on the Dead Sea Scrolls are in Hebrew, with some
fragments written in an ancient version of its alphabet thought to have fallen out of
use in the fifth century BCE. But there are other languages as well. Some scrolls
are in Aramaic, the language spoken by many inhabitants of the region from the
sixth century BCE to the siege of Jerusalem in 70 CE. In addition, several texts
feature translations of the Hebrew Bible into Greek.
The Dead Sea Scrolls include fragments from every book of the Old Testament of
the Bible except for the Book of Esther. The only entire book of the Hebrew Bible
preserved among the manuscripts from Qumran is Isaiah; this copy, dated to the
first century BCE, is considered the earliest biblical manuscript still in existence.
Along with biblical texts, the scrolls include documents about sectarian regulations
and religious writings that do not appear in the Old Testament.
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