In recent years there have been questions raised about
whether the true authors of the scrolls were the Essene people, an ascetic Jewish sec. In many respects the published scrolls seem to
mimic Christian doctrine although most of them dated to a time before the
Christian era. We know that the Essenes
existed in ancient Palestine from at least the 2nd century B.C.E. to
the fall of Israel to the Romans in 74C.E. although in all likelihood they were
around much earlier. In other words, we
know they existed before and well through gospel times. Yet why is it that the Essenes never once
appear by name in the New Testament? It
has been suggested that they are absent because they themselves were the early
Christians. Jesus showed distinctive
signs of an Essene upbringing. At least
one scroll verse seems to speak of an expected Messiah who will “heal the sick,
resurrect the dead, and to the poor announce glad tidings”, words similar to
those quoted by Jesus.
The scrolls speak of a character known as the Teacher of
Righteousness who bears a remarkable resemblance in character and behaviour to
that of Jesus. Scholars believe that to
understand Jesus, we must understand the Jewish world in which he lived. This is where the scrolls are important, for
they are among our best windows on that world.
While the scrolls tell us nothing directly about Jesus or early Christianity,
they tell us a great deal about the language Jesus spoke, about such concepts
as “Messiah” and “Son of God”, about the way Jesus and early Christians
understood and interpreted the Hebrew Bible, about modes of thought of Jesus’
contemporaries and about the other Jewish movements that were swirling around
at the time. The scrolls emphasise the
fact that Jesus and his message were very much related to what was happening in
the Jewish world.
Most people today in the Western world are unfamiliar with
books in a scroll format, but this was the normal way books were copied in the
ancient world and still are in some circumstances in the Far East. When people write a language over a period of
centuries, various changes can be detected in the style of script and in the
way in which words are spelt. The study
of ancient scripts and their relationship to each other is known as palaeography
and is an art rather than a science. It
works by comparing undated documents with dated ones. Unfortunately there were very few known
samples in writing in Hebrew or Aramaic script that were contemporary with the
assumed date of the Qumran library. In
1961, Harvard professor F. M. Cross divided the texts into three categories based
on general characteristics with the plausible periods being:
Archaic c. 250B.C.E. – 150B.C.E.
Hasmonean c.
150B.C.E. – 30B.C.E.
Herodian c. 30B.C.E. – 70B.C.E.
Many scholars agree that more scrolls are yet to be
discovered and that some which have been discovered are still in private
hands. Every 25 years or so the Jordan
Valley is torn apart by earthquakes which cause rock falls that block or
obscure the entrances to a lot of the caves in the region, making them
inaccessible to the Bedouin or to archaeologists with limited equipment. But with modern equipment, and the will to do
so it should be possible to explore what lies beneath the rocks, then the
painstaking yet exciting task of restoring the finds will begin again.
As a lapsed Catholic I have been surprised that this
research has made me want to read more about Jesus and the Bible, he is less of
a mythical mystery now and more of a human being. It appears that the Essene community that he
was a part of betrayed him and was indirectly responsible for his trial and
death, after he dared to disobey their strict laws and heal a crippled man on
the Sabbath. It seems he cared more about
humanity than about out-dated or what he thought were unrealistic laws and he
showed great intelligence and a rebellious, albeit gentle attitude.
Sources:
The mystery and meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls/Shanks, Hershel. Random House, Inc., New York. 1998.
The Dead Sea Scrolls Rediscovered: an updated look at one of archaeology's greatest mysteries/Hodge, Stephen. Seastone, Berkeley California. 2003.
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