The Dead Sea Scrolls
The Dead Sea Scrolls, discovered in caves along the western shore of the Dead Sea from 1947 to 1956, are considered by many to be the single most important archaeological find of the twentieth century. They comprise about 800 documents, some complete or nearly complete, but most quite fragmentary. In fact about 100,000 fragments have been found in all! Most of the scrolls were found in caves near Qumran, where a community lived which some scholars identify as Essences, a Jewish sect known to have existed elsewhere in Israel during the Second Temple period, which includes the time of Jesus. The scrolls comprise, among other things, the oldest copies of the Bible in existence. The Qumran scrolls date from approximately 250 B.C. to about 65 A.D., and at some other locations to about 135 A.D. This means that the Dead Sea Scrolls give us texts of the Bible, which were copied more than 1000 years earlier than any others were now in existence! "In 1947, a young Bedouin shepherd, following a goat that had gone astray, tossed a rock into one of the caves along the seacliffs and heard a cracking sound: the rock had hit a ceramic pot containing leather and papyrus scrolls that were later determined to be nearly twenty centuries old. Ten
(See # 3, page 2) In this day of age the Dead Sea Scrolls are still the subjects of great scholarly and public interests. "One reason why these scrolls are significant is because they provide information about the beliefs and organization of a sectarian group of Jews who were contemporaries with Jesus". Most interesting is the parallels organizational structures: the sectarians divided themselves into twelve tribes led by twelve chiefs, similar to the structure of the early Church, with twelve apostles who, according to Jesus, would to sit on twelve thrones to judge twelve tribes of Israel. (See # 1, page 67) These "texts" that the Essenes hid came to be known as the present day Dead Sea Scrolls. The significance of the Dead Sea Scrolls is a very prominent issue today. (See #2, page 149) The Dead Sea Scrolls even make the suggestion that the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible must be taken seriously. The how Chrisitanity to be rooted in Judaism and have been called the evolutionary link between the two". The Essenes could not have found a better place to hide their precious documents than in the area of The Dead Sea. "For one, the fact that they survived for twenty centuries, that they were found accidentally by Bedouin shepherds, that they are the largest and oldest body of manuscripts relating to the Bible and to the time of Jesus of Nazareth make them a truly remarkable archaeological find". years and many searches later, eleven caves around the Dead Sea were found to contain tens of thousands of scroll fragments dating from the third century B. This revolt lead to The Jewish War, which lasted from (66-70 CE) This war, was the backbone for a revolution by the Jews, a revolution that was to prove disastrous for the Jewish people. The deposits are to contain certain amounts of gold, silver, aromatics, and manuscripts. (See # 8, page 1) "The Scrolls can be divided into two categories-biblical and non-biblical.
Common topics in this essay:
Sea Scrolls,
Dead Sea,
Jesus Nazareth,
John Baptist,
Judaism Christianity,
Isaiah Scroll,
Biblical Studies,
dead sea,
Temple Scroll,
Son God,
sea scrolls,
dead sea scrolls,
Israel Temple,
page 1,
# 8,
8 page,
# 8 page,
# 7,
# 7 page,
7 page,
scrolls discovered,
5 page,
son god,
# 6 page,
# 5 page,
|
Acceptance Essays
