What are the dead sea scrolls?
Ancient writings that scholars assembled along with texts found in caves and buried in the deserts that was the basis for the bible! Every thing that was written after the stone age was to start a religion here on earth that was brought here by aliens on a space ship named HEAVEN, one was your famous jesus and the others were unnamed angels. They had all the technology to cause all of the malady's and strange occurrences that were written about in the bible! The death's of the first born son's, the parting of the waters, the plagues, the walls of Jericho, even the rise of jesus to heaven could all of been accomplished from the space ship! All this is laid out pretty clearly in drawings on walls in caves all over the globe! The cave men were not trying to start a religion, they were just reporting what was going on in their part of the globe! It seems aliens with advanced technology even for today where all over our globe too! Mayans have a gold trinket that looks like a jet and it is also aerodynamically sound, which means it would of flown!
What does the dead sea scrolls mean to religion?
It's hard to say....it really depends on 2 things. First, to which religion and second, who exactly wrote them, and why were they stored the way they were. Little is known about the group that allegedly wrote them. Was is some splinter sect, a scribal school or something else? Were the caves and jars in which the scrolls were found used as a library or as a graveyard (under Jewish law any document that contains a name of God and becomes unusable is buried in a container.) What these documents do show, at least those portions that are legible is that the hebrew texts of the OT that are currently extant are nearly 100% accurate (fewer that 1 change per 25,000 letters or so...and none that change the meaing). It also contains some previously unknown works and some documents pertaining to the rise of Christianity. So appears there's something for everyone who cares to look.
What are the Dead Sea Scrolls?
The Dead Sea Scrolls... are a collection of some 981 different texts discovered between 1946 and 1956 in eleven caves from the immediate vicinity of the ancient settlement at Khirbet Qumran in the West Bank.The texts are of great historical, religious, and linguistic significance because they include the second oldest known surviving manuscripts of works later included in the Hebrew Bible canon, along with deuterocanonical and extra-biblical manuscripts which preserve evidence of the diversity of religious thought in late Second Temple Judaism.The larger consensus is that the Qumran Caves Scrolls date from the last three centuries BCE and the first century CERead the above link for more details.You can see images of the scrolls here, their official home:The Dead Sea Scrolls Digital LibrarySome fun factoids:25 Fascinating Facts About the Dead Sea Scrolls @ Century One Bookstore
Religion: What did the Dead Sea Scrolls reveal about the reason why God tested Abraham?
Hi Bridgit -The DSS consist mostly of copies of the books in the Hebrew Bible, and some documents concerning the rules of the community which preserved the scrolls. There’s nothing particularly startling about ‘why God tested Abraham’ that doesn’t already exist in previously known material.What is interesting about the DSS docs is they set the date of ‘earliest known manuscripts’ of most of the books of the Hebrew Bible back at least 500 years or more from the next oldest known copies - and show that the traditional text of the Torah we use today (the Hebrew versions) has not significantly changed since around 300 BCE.There are also some ‘variant texts’ of some of the books from the other sections of the Hebrew Bible, showing that for some (for instance, some of the prophets) books there were more than one version (most differences are not very significant though).You can get English translations of the DSS (most of them that are readable at least) now with minimal difficulty.The non-Biblical material is also interesting, for instance, the Book of the Wars of the Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness, or the community rule - they shed light on some of the ideas current in the late Second Temple period, in what was probably a fairly small sectarian community.Before we had published information from the DSS documents, a lot of people were making wild assumptions about what was in them, because it seemed ‘secret knowledge’. But most of the material is now public and there isn’t a lot of ‘secret knowledge’, although the Copper Scroll is certainly very interesting!Copper Scroll - Wikipedia
What are the dead sea scrolls?
the dead sea scrolls, are the documents found in 1947 in a cave by a boy, they were inside of large pottery Urns. In them the manuscripts in stone. The documents were from the first century and before. The significance is that they proved that Jesus is the Messiah as promised and that the Jewish Scriptures are intact, exactly the same as in the Bible. The controversy is critics had denied many of these points and were totally proven wrong. Isaiah 7:14 that the messiah would have a miracle birth and be God with us (emanuel from the Hebrew) Isaiah 9:6 "Unto us a child is born a son is given, and he will be mighty God, the prince of peace." Isaiah 52:13-53:12 He will be rejected and lay down his life to make atonement for our sins." and the way to know the Messiah= What helped me to understand this is help from above & Smile is best and I prayed to let Jesus help me "Jesus help me, come into my heart and be my savior and best friend, I am sorry for my sins, thank you for dying for me and your blood to set me free, amen." from Revelation 3:19&20 his promise of love and to come into our heart door!~ I get happy tears because Jesus makes me truely happy & I love you and everyone in Jesus love! please be happy! The Psalms also in tact in the Dead Sea scrolls= Psalm 119: 9-16 How can a young person live a clean life? By carefully reading the map of your Word. I'm single-minded in pursuit of you; don't let me miss the road signs you've posted. I've banked your promises in the vault of my heart so I won't sin myself bankrupt. Be blessed, God; train me in your ways of wise living. I'll transfer to my lips all the counsel that comes from your mouth; I delight far more in what you tell me about living than in gathering a pile of riches. I ponder every morsel of wisdom from you, I attentively watch how you've done it. I relish everything you've told me of life, I won't forget a word of it. good question , David
What do the dead sea scrolls reveal, that could awe and shock us?
Not much really, unless you happen to be really into middle eastern history. In the early days there was lots of speculation that the ‘Teacher of Righteousness’ mentioned in a few documents could have been John the Baptist or even Jesus. Many sensational books were written about this in the 1950s and 60s. But those ideas were discounted by scholars a long time ago. Here’s a good article on what current historians think the scrolls tell us about Jesus and early Christianity.Two things that had the potential of being sensational but never panned out: In 1972 a Catholic scholar named José O'Callaghan Martínez claimed to have found Mark 6:52-53 on one of the document fragments discovered, but no one accepts his identification. A find called the Copper Scroll describes sites around Jerusalem where treasure was supposedly buried. But many of them can’t be identified today and no one (that we know of) has ever found any of the treasure.The main thing we’ve gotten out of the scrolls is a better understanding of Jewish life and culture from around 300 BCE - 100 CE. We see more clearly now that there were all sorts of groups and beliefs swirling around in the palestine of that period. It wasn’t just the “Scribes and Pharisees” mentioned in the New Testament. We got a window into the life and beliefs of one of those groups, a little desert sect of the time that thought it would play a crucial role in the end of the world and the final cosmic battle between good and evil (but quite possibly were all slaughtered by the Romans instead).We also now have scrolls or at least fragments of every book of the Jewish Scriptures except Esther, which are centuries older that anything we had before. This has helped us in translating the Bible and also showed that there were several competing Hebrew texts in this sect’s time.So, there was “shock and awe” stuff in there but after all the sensationalistic smoke has blown away, it mostly has shocked and awed specialists.
Do the Dead Sea scrolls imply God is real?
Nothing anyone writes (or does) can make gods real; they are human - and cultural- constructs. This applies as much to the Dead Sea Scrolls as to anything else people write.On the other hand, if you want to learn some religious history from the Scrolls, I suggest the brilliant archaeologist Robert Eisenman.This is where I began: James the Just in the Habakkuk PesherI also suggest this review by Dr. Andrew P. Gould, Ohio State U. Distinguished Professor of Mathematical and Physical Sciences: Robert Eisenman’s “New Testament Code”.
Do the Dead Sea Scrolls mention Jesus?
Dead Sea Scrolls were written and/ or copied by the Essenes (Est. 408 BCE - 318 CE). It was found in 1946/ 47 and in 1956 from 11 caves in Qumran, contains 981 different manuscripts.The Essenes believed that Menachem the Essene, an advisory of King Herod, was the Messiah and the Teacher of the Righteousness. They also believed that in the court he was secretly preparing a revolt that finally proved unsuccesful.However, the Essenes understood that his death by the Romans on 4 BCE was the fulfilment of the prophecies in Isaiah (cf. Isaiah 53:1–9).Three decades after the death of Menachem, some of the Essenes followed Jesus as referred by John the Baptist (cf. John 1:19–51). John the Baptist, the son of priest Zechariah, became an Essene and opposed the official priests that related with Herod. But, John the Baptist didn't claim himself as the Messiah but Jesus.To see the connection between Jesus and the ex. Essenes, Jesus had ever mentioned about the Holy Spirit as Another Menachem, because Menachem (מנחם ) derived from Hebrew word means “Comforter”. That special word presumably used by Jesus in order to connected with them.“I will ask the Father, and he will give you Another Comforter” (John 14:16).The ex. Essenes, after followed Jesus, did not joined and lived communally as before but lived with the disciples of Jesus which similar with the Essenes in some ways (cf. Acts 2:41–47).That is why in the Qumran Dead Sea Scroll it did not mention about Jesus because the ex Essenes followers of Jesus had lived differently and separately with the communal Essenes.But, they still had skills to copied manuscripts that we knew today as the New Testament which had more than 5,000 ancient copies. The Essenes were well trained writers and copyists. Some of them were Levites and ex. priests or the offsprings.References:Dead Sea Scrolls - WikipediaJesus and Jewish Essenes
What's written in the dead sea scrolls?
I have studied the contents of the Dead Sea Scrolls. My conclusions: Back around the dawn of the Common Era, there was a lot of unrest, stress and paranoia. Rome was sweeping through parts of the world, forcing their domination on people in many lands. Even without that, life was pretty difficult in those times. Jewish people and the Essenes loved to write about apocalypses and gods in very unpleasant, rough stories. There were different groups of Essenes, and their beliefs and practices varied. The documents that comprise the Dead Sea Scrolls include some fragments or complete texts that are part of Christian Bible canon, and LOTS of other writings which are not. Reading many of them only led me to conclude that the books that were made part of Bible canon really are not actually that special, and have indeed been massaged in translation to English to make them readable, as other evidence in the original languages in the texts indicates. These documents are poorly written, and tend to incite the worst feelings of distress and paranoia in the reader. As far as containing things the church did not tell us, they do, if only in the sense that now we can understand, by studying the Scrolls, that there was such a multitude of harsh religious texts written around that time that those that made it into the Bible are vastly diminished by the presence of the others, which we can now see in the Dead Sea Scrolls collection.
What is the significance of the Dead Sea Scrolls?
That if you come into possession of genuine documents which impact the historical basis of the major world religions, you should be very careful who has access and who gets to interpret the content.The reality is that most religions are vulnerable to strict historical scrutiny. Some of the worst wars have been fought over what to non-believers seem like small matters of theology.Possession and interpretation of the Dead Sea Scrolls is power.