This past week, I had the opportunity to view the exhibit of the Dead Sea Scrolls at Union Station in Kansas City, Missouri. It was extremely well done and provided an amazing look at the history and culture of those times. It runs for several more months here before moving on to Los Angeles, and I recommend it to anyone who will be in the area. Here are some comments from area clergy about the significance of the Scrolls. The words of Warren Carter, in particular, caught my attention when contrasted to some of the postings here.

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What faith leaders say about the Dead Sea Scrolls
Scholars and others reflect on significance of the exhibit.
By HELEN T. GRAY
KansasCityStar.com
Sat, Feb 17, 2007




Scholars have called the Dead Sea Scrolls the greatest archaeological discovery of the 20th century. And from what the scrolls reveal, they have lived up to their billing.

Now as thousands of people from throughout the Midwest flock to Union Station to view the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit, local religious leaders express their views on the importance of the scrolls.

“We see how a community, somewhat on the periphery of the normative Jewish community, helped to create a bridge to what would emerge as the early Christian world in the first several centuries of the Common Era. … And the literature they preserved, the biblical texts, and the more sectarian texts that the Dead Sea community wrote and those items that were preserved and discovered in the caves give us tremendous insight into both the development of biblical texts, and also by looking at the manual of discipline, for example, something about the social character and religious character of that community.” --Rabbi Alan Cohen, Congregation Beth Shalom, Overland Park

“Research on the Dead Sea Scrolls has changed the way we think about the origins of the early Christian movement. The scrolls and other Jewish texts have shown that the old stereotype of first-century Judaism as legalistic and bound up in dead ritual was historically inaccurate. The new picture emphasizes diversity, vibrancy, debate, mercy, faithfulness and the importance of covenant. Jesus, Paul and other New Testament writers are shaped by this world.” --Warren Carter, professor of New Testament, St. Paul School of Theology, Kansas City

“With the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947, Scripture scholars now had the earliest texts by which to examine the Hebrew Scriptures, taking us back almost a thousand years from the often used Masoretic text. … The non-biblical texts found at Qumran gave us new insights into the community who produced these texts, with a vision of their faith and belief at a critical time in the history of both Judaism and Christianity. To this very day, scholars continue to examine the Dead Sea Scrolls to help us understand more fully the origin and development of the texts of the Bible.” --Abbot Gregory Polan, Conception Abbey, Conception, Mo

“The Dead Sea Scrolls provide a wonderful link between the Hebrew Scriptures and Jewish life at the time of Jesus. They show the honor given to the written Word of God and continuing attempts to interpret it.” --Molly Marshall, president, Central Baptist Theological Seminary, Shawnee, Ks.

“For Hebrew Bible/Old Testament studies, the Dead Sea Scrolls demonstrate the centuries-long integrity of the process of hand-copying the biblical manuscripts before the invention of the printing press. For Second Temple/New Testament studies they are another example of the yeastiness of Jewish religious life in its homeland in the first century of the Common Era. They gained no large following, and the first revolt against Rome wiped them out, but the Qumran sectarians continue to capture popular attention today because of their vivid, messianic and apocalyptic vision of the end of days.” -- Joseph Coleson, professor of Old Testament, Nazarene Theological Seminary, Kansas City.

“I believe we are linked through faith to those first Christians, and the more that we know about them and their world, the more fully documents that were written at that time, such as the books of our Bible, can be a living, breathing contribution to our walk with God today. The Dead Sea Scrolls are so valuable because they provide a rich source of information about the world into which Jesus was born, about the people who wrote the Bible, and the people about whom the Bible was written. … Anything that can shed light on the people of those times, such as their habits, beliefs and culture, can only contribute to a fuller understanding of the book that we understand to be the Word of God.” --The Rev. Amy Lignitz Harken, minister, First Christian Church of Independence

Great stuff, opk! The Dead Sea Scrolls are simply amazing, and I wish we would find more treasures like them.....more truth is what I hunger for..

I love this stuff! Thanks for the reminder Opk.
The term “Dead Sea Scrolls” refers to 5 groups of documents discovered in caves
of several wadis (a “wadi” is a dry gully or riverbed that fills up during rainy
seasons) that empty into the western side of the Dead Sea. The whole collection
includes portions of countless ancient documents that date from as early as 250 BC
and as late as 700 AD.
In popular parlance,, however, the term “Dead Sea Scrolls” refers to the 5th group of
documents, and that’s what we’ll be talking about here.
The Dead Sea Scrolls (5th group) are the remains of a library. No one knows for sure
whose library it was or its original location. The documents in this group date from as
early as 250 BC and as late as 68 AD.
They were found quite by accident during the years between 1947 to 1956 by
Bedouin shepherds in 11 caves near the Dead Sea. The first discovery was in 1947,
when a shepherd found 7 scrolls (plus fragments); when their significance was
realized, more searches were conducted, and by 1956, 10 other caves were found,
containing not only scrolls and fragments but also pottery pieces with inscriptions on
them.
It became clear to scholars that these were indeed the remains of a library, but as I
mentioned, there was no indication of where the whole collection came from. Some
have concluded that the documentswere written in a nearby ancient Jewish religious
settlement (almost like a monastery) called Qumran. Other people feel that this library
was brought to the caves from Jerusalem for safekeeping before the Romans attacked
and destroyed the city in 70 AD.
The term “scroll” is a bit deceptive. Only a small portion of the discovery is actually
in “scroll” form; most are fragments, and some of them are no larger than a human
fingernail. Still, after years of analysis, the scholars have identified about 800 separate
manuscripts, and sometimes, they had only a fingernail-sized scrap to work from.
These manuscripts can be divided into “biblical” and “non-biblical” literature. The
biblical stuff was easier to identify because the scholars already had the Bible to use as
a comparative document. In the total collection, about 20-25% of the fragments and
scrolls are biblical material. Every book in the Hebrew Bible (much of our “Old
Testament”) is represented, except for the Book of Esther. There is nothing from what
we call the “New Testament”, so this was evidently an exclusively Jewish library.
The remainder of the material (non-biblical stuff) is hymns, bible commentaries,
wisdom literature, letters, legal texts – and there’s even a set of hidden-treasure
directions on a scroll made from copper-foil (it reveals 64 locations of buried treasure,
giving a description of what is buried at each location, plus its value). Conservative
estimates have placed the whole treasure at 60 tons of precious metal, and scholars
have concluded that, if real, it could easily have been the contents of the Temple
treasury in Jerusalem, hidden away when the Roman army appeared in Galilee prior to
the destruction of Jerusalem.
To give you some idea of what the Bible scholars were facing: Cave #4 had over 500
manuscripts in it, but they were all in tatters; not a single scroll was intact, and
estimates claimed that there were 15,000 fragments that the scholars had to piece
together. In effect, they had to assemble 500 jigsaw puzzles, with 90% of the pieces
missing.
Now, as to the significance of these scrolls, you have to remember that even though
there was nothing from what we call the “New Testament” as part of this find, the
whole picture is immensely valuable for Christians.
First of all, with information from the scrolls, many parts of the so-called “Old
Testament” can be more easily understood; some parts of the Bible have already been
clarified and re-written, based upon findings in the scrolls themselves.
Secondly, one can get a much clearer picture of the world in which Jesus and the
early Christians lived, and this will make portions of the “New Testament” easier to
understand and appreciate. For example, the scrolls paint a fascinating picture of the
Pharisees and helped to understand a lot about why and how they agreed and
disagreed with Jesus.

This was what caught my eye:

quote:

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“Research on the Dead Sea Scrolls has changed the way we think about the origins of the early Christian movement. The scrolls and other Jewish texts have shown that the old stereotype of first-century Judaism as legalistic and bound up in dead ritual was historically inaccurate. The new picture emphasizes diversity, vibrancy, debate, mercy, faithfulness and the importance of covenant. Jesus, Paul and other New Testament writers are shaped by this world.”

--Warren Carter, professor of New Testament, St. Paul School of Theology, Kansas City

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This discovery still does not get the attention it deserves, at least within Christian circles.