Dead Sea Scrolls

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BillClintonsCigar

Registered Senior Member
Perhaps it is highly significant the dead sea scrolls were found very shortly after the end of the Greatest War the world has ever seen; the Second World War. I read they were found in a cave by a shepherd in 1947 (if I remember correctly), near the promised land. While it is possible these scrolls could have been concocted as an epidemic for anti-war desires, surely tests have been made to discover whether this is true or not. It is my understanding the scrolls have been accepted as having a true origin, i.e., they were not written for such a purpose, and are to be beleived as being part of scripture.

Remember this was only 56 years ago! This is during some people of today's lifetime. Surely the globe has not been fully explored, and there must be parts undiscovered. It must also, therefore, be possible there are other testaments, and possibly more writings of/about Jesus himself.

If the scrolls have been found to be significant in origin, then is it not significant they were found at such a time (post-war)?
 
I believe the scrolls were radio-carbon dated and confirmed to be older than the sources of scripture previously discovered. This however was apparently the cause for more upset than a force for pacification, since the Catholic Church promptly began insisting that their contents remain undisclosed, presumably because of the fact - later revealed to the world - that they contained elements of scripture present in the Bible, but also other material which prompted the question, not surprisingly:
Could this other material not be of similar significance and/or value?

To address your point about other writings concerning Jesus, there exists a Gospel of Timothy, not included in the bible, which contains elements both similar and disimilar to the "existing" or "accapted" gospels. And lets not forget the Gnostic texts...
While not unknown, they are certainly unacceptable to the Catholic Church.

An Aside:
A TV program I once viewed entitled Who Wrote The Bible provided an interesting "revelation" concerning how the contents of the Bible came to be what we refer to as such today:
Apparently, after the conversion of the Roman emperor Constantine to Christianity, he became aware that there were a variety of Christian texts circulating throughout the Empire, and decided that he wanted a compendium of the material produced, commisioning 50 copies. (An unheard of number of volumes of a single work, or so it was said)
An effort was made by theologians to compile the material and organize it into some manner of "final draft". But the sheer volume and variety confounded them.
At some point, Constantine apparently became fed up with their apparent dawdling, and - being as he was Emperor & all, gave orders to the effect that they pick up the pace & get the job done "or else".
So, some arbitrary picking & choosing was done - by whose exact authority I must admit escapes me at the moment - and the text we now puzzle over was compiled and scribbled up for "His Nibs".
 
I thought this might be of interest ...

Previous Scroll Discoveries

It is worth noting that scrolls have actually been discovered in this region at least twice before. A Church father named Origen, who died in the early third century CE, wrote that in his day a jar was discovered "near Jericho" that contained Hebrew and Greek books. Some of these were biblical scrolls and Origen made use of them in his own research. We have a similar story from an eastern Church father named Timothy, who wrote around the year 800 CE. One of his letters, to a man named Sergius, is preserved in the Syriac language. He tells how a cache of books was discovered , again "near Jericho." The dog of a local Arab was chasing after another animal and ran inside a cave. When it didn't come out for some time its owner followed it, and discovered that the cave was full of scrolls. The hunter reported his find to the Jewish community in Jerusalem, and when they investigated they found many books in Hebrew, including books of the Bible. It has been suggested that the phrase "near Jericho" describes Qumran itself, although this seems geographically difficult. But in any case, Jewish scrolls have been discovered and removed from caves in the Judean desert a number of times in the past. This may explain why some Syriac hymns, otherwise unknown, were found in their original Hebrew forms among the Dead Sea Scrolls; they may have been retrieved from the caves and translated centuries before.

Source: Dead Sea Scrolls Web Page
 
There is a program on The Dead Sea Scrolls regularly featured on Discovery TV - well worth watching at least 3 times to take it all in. Recommended.
 
Originally posted by Red Devil
There is a program on The Dead Sea Scrolls regularly featured on Discovery TV - well worth watching at least 3 times to take it all in. Recommended.
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I seriously doubt that anything "regularly featured on Discovery TV" is "well worth watching at least 3 times". Can you provide an example of what you found so valuable?
 
When something is as interesting as this, to watch it at least more than once is imperative if you want to actually learn something - how many times have you seen a film and spotted something you missed before?
 
how many times have you seen a film and spotted something you missed before?
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Very true! there are so many missed things in films. Some example that I (but maybe others too) have noticed are: In Snatch, Cousin Avi's clothes change with every camera shot 9in the tailor scene), in Good Will Hunting 'Ben Afflecks' hard drinking Uncle; Marty, is at the end of the bar when 'Robin Williams' tells the Stewardess joke, and there are quite a few of more scriptual relevance.
 
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