You're mistaken. We have carvings that are older than the 2000+ year old Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS), but it may be inaccurate to refer to cave carvings and inscriptions as "documents."

But even if you classify stone and clay carvings as documents, the statement is nonetheless true: the DSS are "some of the oldest surviving documents on earth." There are some fragments that are older (e.g. a clay fragment found in Jerusalem [0] dating to 1400 BC), yet the DSS remain as some of the oldest surviving documents in existence, and they comprise more than a mere fragment. For example, the DSS contains almost all the books of Psalms (the longest book of the Bible) and several copies of Isaiah.

This is an interesting find because it suggests there are more caves than previously believed, which may produce additional ancient witnesses to the historic texts of the Bible and other Jewish religious documents.

[0]: http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Oldest-written-document-ever-fou...

Several people have asked what the poster is referring to here. The poster is correct:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuneiform_script

> Between half a million[3] and two million cuneiform tablets are estimated to have been excavated in modern times, of which only approximately 30,000[4] – 100,000 have been read or published.

The fact that so few have been translated thus far is pretty amazing.

Millions? Where?

What documents?

Thanks pointing that out. It is easy to fall into the hype of written press.

I thought the same thing. :)

I'm sure there are lots of people associated with this discovery that would be happy to sweep those older documents under the rug and forget about them.