Scrolls more than half a century since their discovery.
The tiny 60 or more fragments of parchments bearing encrypted Hewbrew writing had previously been thought
to come from a variety of different scrolls.
But now academics have found the pieces all fit together to make just one scroll.
The document makes reference to a unique 363-day calendar and a festival that marks the changing of the seasons
celebrated by an ancient, celebrate , Jewish sect.
The latest deciphered scroll contains references to the 363-day calendar used by the sect, as opposed to the lunar
calendar used in Jewish religious practice today.
The scroll identifies the name of a festival that celebrates the changing of the seasons, the festivals included New
Wheat, New Wine and New Oil, which are related to the Jewish festival Shavout and no longer observed in Judaism.
Researchers also identified a festival observed four times a year called Tekufah-which means 'period' in modern-day
Hebrew and marks the transition between the seasons.
Annotations in the margin from a scribe correcting the author's original work helped them decipher its meaning.
Many experts believe the manuscripts of the Dead Sea were written by the celibate Essenes, a dissident Jewish
sect that had retreated into the Judaea desert around Qumran and its caves.
The Dead Sea Scrolls have fascinated scholars and historians since the ancient texts were found around 700 years
ago scattered within a series of caves in the West Bank.
Eshbal Ratson and Jonathan Ben-Dov from the university of Haifa's Bible studies department found the pieces all
fir together after they started examining them just under a year ago.
Some of the fragments they had to decipher were smaller than 1cm(0.15 inch).
'They put it al together and said it was actually on e scroll,' said IIan Yavelberg a university spokesman.
A Haifa University statement said that Ratson and Ben-Dov were now work on deciphering the last remaining scroll.
The theory says the group either wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls or were caretakers of the legal, philosophical and religious documents.
The latest deciphered scroll contains references to the 374-day calendar used by the sect, as opposed to the lunar calendar used by in Jewish religious practice today.
Dailymailonline 22, Jan 2018
By Phobe Weston