Dead Sea Scrolls

Hi Everyone,

Just read about the Dead Sea Scrolls, seems quite interesting and I'd never heard of them before so thought I'd share

The Dead Sea Scrolls consist of roughly 1,000 documents, including texts from the Hebrew Bible, discovered between 1947 and 1979 in eleven caves in and around the Wadi Qumran (near the ruins of the ancient settlement of Khirbet Qumran, on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea) in the West Bank. The texts are of great religious and historical significance, as they include practically the only known surviving copies of Biblical documents made before 100 AD, and preserve evidence of considerable diversity of belief and practice within late Second Temple Judaism. They are written in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek, mostly on parchment, but with some written on papyrus. [1]

Link: en.wikipedia.org...

reply to post by Death_Kron


" Have you seen the one that gives instrcuctions of War - I find that one particuarly disturbing - Its like a Manual, but why/??

They also contain the nostic gospel which paints a very different picture of JC. In that version of events (if memory serves) Jesus had a doppleganger on the cross instead. It also hinted at a romance btwenn JC and Marie Magdaline - the Da Vinci code stuff.

If you liked the dead sea scrolls you'll really like the The Nag Hammadi Library.

en.wikipedia.org...
www.gnosis.org...

I'm also including a couple other links you might be intrested in checking out.




www.gnosis.org...
www.sacred-texts.com...
www.sacred-texts.com...
www.urantia.org...
www.thelostbooks.com...

[edit on 14-9-2008 by Incarnated]

Originally posted by Good Wolf
They also contain the nostic gospel which paints a very different picture of JC. In that version of events (if memory serves) Jesus had a doppleganger on the cross instead. It also hinted at a romance btwenn JC and Marie Magdaline - the Da Vinci code stuff.

No the Dead Sea Scrolls don't mention Jesus at all, get your facts straight...

" There are in fact no Gospels among the hundreds of documents found at Qumran. And it is not because their accounts of Jesus portray him in a more human way than the gospels of the new testament. The scrolls say NOTHING about Jesus at all" - Bart D. Ehrman (Agnostic New Testament Scholar), Truth and Fiction the Da Vinci Code pg. 35.

So what do the Dead Sea Scrolls contain?

"The first thing to stress, again, is there are no Christian documents of any kind here: these are all Jewish texts, made by jews, copied by jews, and used by jews around about the time of Jesus (circa 150 BCE - 70 CE). Among the most signifgant documents in the Dead Sea Crolls are copies of the Hebrew Bible (the christian old testament)" - Bart D. Ehrman (Agnostic New Testament Scholar), Truth and Fiction the Da Vinci Code pg. 29.


"Most of the other books dicovered in the caves near Qumran were previously uknown to us - a veritable library of Jewish texts previously unavailable...They include commentaries written on biblical texts, in which the authors interpret tthe text and explain the signifigance, fro the ongoign life of the community" - Same Source, Page 30


[edit on 14-9-2008 by Boywonder13]

[edit on 14-9-2008 by Boywonder13]

Then what am I thinking of?

Originally posted by Good Wolf
Then what am I thinking of?

If ur basing the info of the Da Vinci Code, than it wrongly states that the Dead Sea Scrolls do contain mentions of Jesus, so people got confused about that, and i guess took it as fact.

u maybe be reffering to the Nag Hammadi library.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nag_Hammadi_library

And for those who think these Gnostic texts have a more human jesus

"Jesus is portayed as more divine in the Nag Hammadi source than he is in the Gospels of the New Testament" - Bart D. Ehrman (Agnostic New Testament Scholar/Skepitc) Truth and Fiction in the Da Vinci Code pg. 26

[edit on 14-9-2008 by Boywonder13]

Well, i'll have to get back to you then. As an incredible stroke of luck, the history channel docco which i saw long ago which made reference to the gnostic stuff happened to be on last night and I taped it. Ill be able to clairify....

...Unless i was tripping on acis tabs or something at the time.

And no, I haven't read the da vinci code. I saw the movie and it was cool but I put no more weight in it than I did Indianna Jones (the crystals skulls one - because the crystal skull have been proven to be fraudulent)

[edit on 9/14/2008 by Good Wolf]

reply to post by Good Wolf


" I think you may mean the gnostic gospels of which is said to include fragments of the Gospel Mary Magdalene Found in 1945 at Nag Hammadi in the Egyptian desert, It was not acknowledged by the church but if it infringed upon or contridicted there beliefs in any way then you can see why"

I think you might be right.

Originally posted by MCoG1980
reply to post by Good Wolf

 

" I think you may mean the gnostic gospels of which is said to include fragments of the Gospel Mary Magdalene Found in 1945 at Nag Hammadi in the Egyptian desert, It was not acknowledged by the church but if it infringed upon or contridicted there beliefs in any way then you can see why"

It would be hard to include something that had not-so-subtle jabs at the Church itself; "Mary" allegorically represents a Gnostic group while the incredulous apostles represent the more orthodox establishment. And the Gospel of Mary was not found with the Nag Hammadi codices.

And the idea of Christ having a "doppelganger" on the cross is a misunderstanding of docetic ideas.

[edit on 14-9-2008 by Eleleth]

It's good having people who know better than I do, on here.

reply to post by Eleleth



Sorry, i did'nt post the Christ doppelganger thing.
I took my information from a few sources that had said where the Gospels where found but if you have correct information please share - we can all learn from each other here.

Talking of Doppel gangers though, that's a strange one all on its own and maybe a thread should be started on that ;o)

Originally posted by MCoG1980
reply to post by Eleleth

 

Sorry, i did'nt post the Christ doppelganger thing.
I took my information from a few sources that had said where the Gospels where found but if you have correct information please share - we can all learn from each other here.

Talking of Doppel gangers though, that's a strange one all on its own and maybe a thread should be started on that ;o)

Sorry, I didn't mean to single you out--that Gospel of Mary has a listing right there on Wikipedia that covers the basics; it was found in 1896. As for the doppelgangers, the heresiologists reported that Basilides taught that Simon of Cyrene was crucified in Christ's place, but it's hard to know what he really thought about it since we don't have any of his original writings.

I'm starting a new thread on doppelgangers - if you get time have alook. I dont mena it in the same way as the christ thing, i would be going off topic.

reply to post by Boywonder13


Thank you for bringing up Bart Ehrman. I have used some of his information also on my "Christianity is Imploding" thread - "Misquoting Jesus..."

It is interesting that so many Biblical scholars are coming forward with the accurate but not so new discoveries about the lack of inspiration regarding the Bible and its many "issues." It seems that so many theologians have done their share in blocking this information from coming out.

It has taken a fictional book - Da Vinci Code to bring forward Michael Baigents co-authored book, "Holy Blood, Holy Grail," (the backbone to Dan Brown's books) to the eyes of the public. Otherwise, without this expose, some of the other writings by Biblical scholars may not have had quite the voice, and that includes: Ehrman.

Info to note for the discussion:

All of this changed in 1947/48 with the Discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

The dead sea scrolls do not contain Only the Old Testament. Their collection is more broad. However, the Dead Sea Scrolls contained all of the Old Testament written in Hebrew (with the exception of Esther).

The Dead Sea Scrolls changed the world of Biblical Studies. The reason is that those Old Testament Manuscripts were dated to 200 B.C.

All of a sudden, there now was a copy of the Old Testament, and it was one thousand two hundred years older than the Leningrad Codex.

We might think that this would make the scholars overjoyed. After all, this was like discovering the Holy Grail. They had wanted to find the genuine Old Testament, and now they had succeeded.

AND...it was dated to 200 years BEFORE Christ. This meant that the Christians could not possibly have tampered with it. Christ would not be born for another 200 years, when the Dead Sea Scrolls were being handwritten.

However, many scholars were not happy with the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. What the Dead Sea Scrolls proved is that the Christian Church had been the faithful transmitter of the Old Testament, and that its copies were real, legitimate, and accurate.

And what Bible was closest to the Ancient Old Testament written in Hebrew ? The English copy of the Old Testament in the King James Bible.

The Scholars who wanted to disprove the Bible were extremely unhappy. They had spent so many years, and so many books explaining how Christians could not possibly be right, could not possibly be accurate. Then in one year, their pet theories, their academic careers, their books, all of these were turned upside down, when they had to admit that the Christians had been right all along.

Strangely, it looked as though God might have been sovereign after all, as if He really were watching over the process of the transmission of His word, the Bible.

www.exorthodoxforchrist.com...

Originally posted by Good Wolf
Then what am I thinking of?

You could be thinking of the Gospel of Thomas discovered in 1945 at Nag Hammadi, Egypt.


www.sacred-texts.com...

What do you mean that Jesus was protrayed more divinve end the Naq Hammadi library how is he protrayed?

Originally posted by slymattb
What do you mean that Jesus was protrayed more divinve end the Naq Hammadi library how is he protrayed?

Well, going back to the docetic thing, Gnostic the idea was that because material bodies were inherently corrupt, Christ, being the incorruptible Logos of God, only appeared to be a flesh and blood human being.

Being unrepentant heretics, they tended to treat this subject with a bit of wry humor that gets lost on most people; during the crucifixion Jesus is said to have laughed at the foolish rulers who believed they could kill an immortal spirit.

[edit on 15-9-2008 by Eleleth]