Qumran -The Dead Sea Scrolls
In 1947, a Bedouin shepherd chasing a stray discovered the initial Dead Sea Scrolls in a cave overlooking the Dead Sea. Three types of documents have been found in the caves near Qumran:
- Copies of books of the Hebrew Bible, Isaiah, of which two almost complete scrolls have been found;
- Copies of books now collected in the Old Testament Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, Tobit, 1 Enoch, and Jubilees; and
- Documents composed by an ascetic community, possibly the Essenes, including a book of community rules called The Manual of Discipline, an allegorical account of the community called The War of the Sons of Light with the Sons of Darkness, a group of devotional poems called The Thanksgiving Psalms, a commentary on the Book of Habakkuk, and an extensive work, known as the Temple Scroll, containing ritual law.
Some believe that the Qumran scrolls are part of the library of a community, perhaps Essene, that lived at Qumran, and thus survived the destruction of the settlement in 68 A.D. Remarkable parallels in expression and thought exist between the Qumran materials and the New Testament, leading to speculation as to their influence on early Christianity.
|
|
