Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] What are the Dead Sea Scrolls? The Basics Written by Bart Ehrman Read by Ken Teutsch I gave a lecture the other day in which I mentioned the Dead Sea Scrolls. This morning, when looking back over the blog, I realized I haven't really said much about them for years.
[00:00:23] So here are some of the basics you can pull out when things get dull at your next cocktail party.
[00:00:29] Even though just about every thinking human being in our context has heard of the Dead Sea Scrolls, most have no clue what the scrolls are, what they contain, and how they were found. It's no surprise they've at least heard of them. The Dead Sea Scrolls are, by virtual consensus, the most significant manuscript discovery of the 20th century, of major importance for understanding Judaism at the time of Jesus and, in some respects, the teachings of Jesus himself.
[00:00:59] Here is what I say about the scrolls in my New Testament textbook, Oxford University Press the New A Historical and Literary Introduction I begin by talking about the Jewish group widely thought to have been responsible for producing, using, and eventually hiding the scrolls, which remained hidden from 70 CE until 1947.
[00:01:23] The group is called the Essenes.
[00:01:27] The Essenes are the one Jewish sect not explicitly mentioned in the New Testament. Ironically, they are also the group about which we are best informed. This is because the famous Dead Sea Scrolls were evidently produced by a group of Essenes who lived in a community east of Jerusalem, in the wilderness area near the western shore of the Dead Sea, in a place that is today called Qumran.
[00:01:53] I say that they evidently produced the scrolls because the term Essene never occurs in them. But we know from other ancient authors, such as Josephus, that a community of Essenes was located in this area.
[00:02:07] Moreover, the social arrangements and theological views described in the Dead Sea Scrolls correspond to what we know about the Essenes from these other accounts.
[00:02:17] Most scholars are reasonably certain, therefore, that the scrolls represent a library used by this sect, or at least by the part of it living near Qumran.
[00:02:28] As was the case with the Gnostic documents uncovered near Nag Hammadi, Egypt, the discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls was completely serendipitous. In 1947, a shepherd boy searching for a lost goat in the barren wilderness near the northwest shore of the Dead Sea happened to toss a stone into a cave and heard it strike something going in. He discovered an ancient earthenware jar that contained a number of old scrolls. The books were recovered by Bedouin shepherds. News of the discovery reached antiquities dealers. Biblical scholars learned of the find, and a search was conducted both to find more scrolls in the surrounding caves and to retrieve those that had already been found by the Bedouin, who cut some of them up to sell one piece at a time.
[00:03:17] Some of the caves in the region yielded entire scrolls. Others contained thousands of tiny scraps that are virtually impossible to piece back together. The problem is that so many of the pieces are missing. Imagine trying to do an immense jigsaw puzzle under these conditions. Or rather, dozens of immense jigsaw puzzles, not knowing what the end product of any of them is to look like when most of the pieces are lost and those that remain are all mixed together.
[00:03:47] All in all, there are hundreds of documents that are represented, many of them only by fragments the size of a postage stamp, others perhaps a couple dozen or so, in scrolls of sufficient length to give us a full idea of their contents.
[00:04:01] Most of the scrolls are written in Hebrew, others in Aramaic. Different kinds of literature are represented here.
[00:04:08] There are at least partial copies of every book of the Jewish Bible, with the exception of the book of Esther.
[00:04:14] Some of them are fairly complete.
[00:04:17] These are extremely valuable because of their age. They are nearly a thousand years older than the oldest copies of the Hebrew Scriptures that we previously had.
[00:04:27] We can therefore check to see whether Jewish scribes over the intervening centuries reliably copied their texts.
[00:04:34] The short answer is that, for the most part, they did.
[00:04:37] There are also commentaries on some of the biblical books, written principally to show that the predictions of the ancient prophets had come to be fulfilled in the experiences of the Essene believers and in the history of their community.
[00:04:51] In addition, there are books that contain psalms and hymns composed by members of the community, prophecies that indicate the future course of events that were believed to be ready to transpire in the author's own day, and rules for the the members of the community to follow in their lives together.
[00:05:08] Sifting through all of these books, scholars have been able to reconstruct the life and beliefs of the Essenes in considerable detail.
[00:05:17] It appears that their community at Qumran was started during the early Maccabean period, perhaps around 150 BCE by pious Jews who were convinced that the Hasmoneans had usurped their authority by by appointing a non Zadokite as high priest. Believing that the Jews of Jerusalem had gone astray, this group of Essenes chose to start their own community in which they could keep the Mosaic law rigorously and maintain their own ritual purity in the wilderness.
[00:05:47] They did so fully expecting the apocalypse of the end of time to be imminent. When it came, there would be a final battle between the forces of good and evil. The children of light and the children of darkness. The battle would climax with the triumph of God and the entry of his children into the blessed kingdom.
[00:06:06] Some of the scrolls indicate that this kingdom would be ruled by two Messiahs, one a king and the other a priest. The priestly Messiah would lead the faithful in their worship of God in a purified temple where sacrifices could again be made in accordance with God's will.
[00:06:23] In the meantime, the true people of God needed to be removed from the impurities of this world, including the impurities prevalent in the Jewish temple and among the rest of the Jewish people. These Essenes therefore started their own monastic like community with strict rules for admission and membership. A two year initiation was required, after which, if approved, a member was to donate all of his possessions to the community fund and to to share the common meal with all the other members.
[00:06:53] Rigorous guidelines dictated the life of the community.
[00:06:57] Members had fixed hours for work and rest and for their meals. There were required times of fasting and strict penalties were imposed for unseemly behavior such as interrupting one another, talking at meals and laughing at inappropriate times.
[00:07:13] It appears that when the Jewish war of 66-73 CE began, the Essenes at Qumran hid some of their sacred writings before joining in the struggle. It may well be that they saw this as the final battle preliminary to the end of time, when God would establish his kingdom and send its Messiahs.
[00:07:34] Why are the Essenes important for understanding the historical Jesus?
[00:07:38] In part because Jesus appears to have shared many of the Essenes apocalyptic views. Even though he did not belong to their sect. He too believed that the end of time was near and that people had to prepare for the coming onslaught.
[00:07:53] I'll say a bit more about that in the next post.
