The significance of the Dead Sea Scrolls

The discovery in caves by the Dead Sea of the ancient writings known as the Dead Sea Scrolls has been described as the most sensational archaeological discovery of the twentieth century. But what real significance do they have for us? Having accumulated a number of books on the subject over the years I recently read them all and came to the answer, Not a great deal, apart from one very significant fact, although there are some other useful points which I will bring out at the end.

The significant fact is that some of scrolls were of books of the Old Testament, and many (though not all) of these were textually virtually identical to the much later texts which were hitherto all that were available to scholars. In other words, the Dead Sea discoveries give us confidence that the Word of God has been accurately transmitted down the ages. This fact is well known and will not be developed further in this article. Additionally, there are one or two cases where a slightly different reading in a Dead Sea Scroll text of an Old Testament book is considered to clarify the meaning, though these examples are not necessarily convincing.

There is, however, one point that should be made about the discovery of Bible texts. It is often said that the Biblical manuscripts discovered by the Dead Sea include every Old Testament book except Esther. However, one book I read pointed out that this is misleading. It is true of the twenty-two books which make up the Jewish Old Testament, the Jews merging a number of books which we regard as separate, though they have the same material in their Old Testament as we do. In fact there is no scroll of Nehemiah, which in the Jewish Old Testament is combined with Ezra to make one book.

What do the scrolls consist of? There are three broad categories:

• Biblical texts
• texts of other books already known
• writings hitherto unknown and thought to be the literature of a Jewish sect resident by the Dead Sea.

It is this latter category of writings that have provided a fertile ground for scholarly debate and discussion, much of it inconclusive.

Some background

have no intention here of going into details about the discovery of the scrolls. They came to light initially in 1948, after Bedouin had discovered whole scrolls in caves by the Dead Sea. Over the years other scrolls became available from the same source, and in addition large quantities of fragments were discovered in searches by archaeologists in the area by the Dead Sea. The history of Dead Sea Scroll research can be divided into three phases:

Phase 1. The scrolls discovered initially were whole or nearly complete, and their texts were published fairly quickly. It was apparent that some of the scrolls were the writings of a Jewish sect, and it was generally accepted that this sect had its home at Qumran, the ruins of an ancient settlement close to the caves where the initial discoveries were made. Great excitement was caused when these scrolls were published, and many books were written about them.

Phase 2. There was then a considerable period of time when attention tended to fade away. After the main scrolls were published there remained the task of piecing together and publishing the many thousands of fragments which had been discovered. These fragments were mostly kept at the Rockefeller Museum in East Jerusalem, then in Jordanian hands, and a team of scholars from various Western nations were set to work on these fragments. In the Six-Day War of June 1967 the museum and therefore the scrolls fell into Israeli hands, but matters continued much the same until the late 1980s, with very little in the way of published material emerging.

Phase 3. At the end of the 1980s there was an upsurge of complaints about the fact that the scholars assigned to publish the scrolls had not generally done so. The Israeli authorities took the matter in hand, removed some scholars and appointed for the first time Israeli scholars to take part in the work. During the 1990s publication of scroll material was greatly accelerated, to the extent that it would appear that all significant material has now been published. The publication of all this new material has led to a renewal of Dead Sea Scroll studies and much scholarly debate.

Although, as far as I can gather, publication of the Dead Sea Scrolls is now complete, there remains the possibility that more might come to light. There are apparently strong indications that several more intact scrolls remain in the possession of Arabs, who may one day be prepared to release them or sell them. Further discoveries may yet be made, though all the caves in the area have been thoroughly explored and the current political situation is not favorable to further exploration since the caves are situated in the territory taken over by Israel in 1967.

Debate and discussion

What is the situation today regarding the Dead Sea Scrolls and the people who wrote them? The answer is, Much confusion, as scholars put forward all kinds of theories.

Initially it was thought that the scrolls were the writings of a section of the Essene sect, a Jewish sect not referred to in the Bible but spoken of by Josephus and other contemporary authors, one of whom, the Roman Pliny, said that they lived by the Dead Sea. With the publication of more and more material other views have emerged, and there are now scholars who variously connect the Dead Sea sect with the Saddu­cees, the Pharisees, the Zealots, and even the early Christians, of which more later.

Likewise, there is no agreement as to the nature of the settlement adjacent to the caves where the first scrolls were found. Initially it was said to be a kind of monastic settlement, that is, without women and children. Later evidence suggested that this was not so, and theories have even been advanced that it was a fort and nothing to do with the scrolls, which were hidden away at the time of the Jewish revolt of A.D. 66­70 by those escaping from Jerusalem.

Some scrolls are about conflicts involving the persecution of the people of the scrolls and about individuals with names like ‘the teacher of righteousness’ and ‘the wicked priest’. It is generally agreed that the scrolls should be dated to about a hundred years before the time of Christ, and that this conflict relates to events when the Has- moneans (Maccabees) ruled, a conflict which resulted in the sect which produced the scrolls establishing themselves by the Dead Sea.

As stated above, there are those who seek to relate the scrolls to early Christianity. However, these are maverick scholars, not taken seriously who have succeeded in making a name for themselves, and probably lots of money from their publications and media appearances as well. Their ideas are fanciful in the extreme and totally incompatible with acceptance of the Bible, as the Word of God.

At the time when controversy blew up over the failure of the scholars to publish the scrolls they were studying, another idea emerged which, time has shown to have no substance. Many of these scholars were Roman Catholics, and it was a Roman Catholic institution, the Ecole Biblique in East Jerusalem, which had control over most, of the scrolls. It was alleged that there were unpublished scrolls which contained material that undermined the whole foundation of Christianity, and that the Vatican was therefore deliberately suppressing them. When the scrolls were eventually published this was of course found to have no truth in it. Now the scrolls are under the direct control of the Israeli authorities, who of course have no reason to suppress any evidence prejudicial to Christianity or the Roman Catholic Church.

There are two specific claims worth mentioning. The media some years ago seized upon a report of a scroll which mentioned ‘a pierced Messiah’. There is much in the scrolls about a Messiah figure, which is hardly surprising given the teaching of the Old Testament. However, the idea of a Messiah pierced by his enemies, supposedly linking with the crucifixion, is now discredited, as scholars believe the text was misread, and it is in fact the Messiah who pierces his enemies. Another claim made is that tiny fragments, just a few Greek letters, are in fact parts of the Gospel of Mark and the First Letter to Timothy, but again this is not generally agreed. Both these claims would, of course, support the idea that the Dead Sea sect was linked to early Christianity, but seem to stem from a desire by scholars to make a name for themselves.

Biblical links

A fruitful area for scholarly analysis is that of links between material in the scrolls and the Old and New Testaments. This largely arises from a desire to make discoveries about the origin of Christianity, and it must be recognized that scholars do not in general approach the subject from a belief in the Divine origin of the Bible. Although claims that the people of the scrolls were actually the early Christians are rejected by reputable scholars, many learned books and articles have been written seeking to establish that Jesus, John the Baptist and the Apostles Paul and John were influenced in their teaching by the Dead Sea Sect. There are a number of points which can be made in response to this:

1. If the Dead Sea Scrolls are the library of a group related to the Essene’s, or some other Jewish sect, then it is highly likely that John the Baptist, Jesus and the apostles would have come into contact with them and their teachings at some time. Given this, it would not be surprising to find, in their teaching, material which opposed the wrong ideas of the sect.
2. Scholars have come up with alleged similarities in the teachings of Jesus and the apostles to the practices of the Dead Sea Scroll sect as revealed in the scrolls. However, other scholars have responded to this by showing that these similarities are by no means convincing, and that a far more impressive list of differences can be compiled.
3. There are in places close similarities between the language used in the scrolls and New Testament language. However, much of this is because both are based on the Old Testament. In particular, there is much in the scrolls about expectations of a Messiah to come, based on the Old Testament, which of course is what the New Testament speaks of frequently. Furthermore, it is hardly surprising that contemporaries should use similar language; such would surely be a reflection of the forms of speech in common usage then.

What we can gain from the scrolls

What can we gain from the writings of the sect which produced the Dead Sea Scrolls, apart from the very important point mentioned at the outset, that they confirm the accuracy with which the Old Testament Scriptures have come down to us? The value of the scrolls to scholars is that they are writings dating to the time just before Christ and thus give a picture of Judaism at that time, albeit from the viewpoint of what was a minority group.

Prior to their discovery, information about Judaism in the time of Christ and the apostles was gained chiefly from the Talmud. The Talmud, however, was compiled hundreds of years after the time of Christ. It reflects the new situation which arose after A.D. 70: the temple destroyed, sacrifices no longer able to be offered, no commonwealth of Israel, and most of the Jews of the land scattered into exile. It does not therefore necessarily provide an accurate background to the Gospels. Furthermore, there is a bias in rabbinical Judaism against Christianity, which is likely to have led to a distortion of how it presents the first-century situation.

With this in mind, here are a number of points which serve to support the authenticity of the New Testament:

1. The Dead Sea Scrolls have helped to establish that the New Testament is essentially Jewish in its background, especially the Gospels, as one would suppose from a natural reading of them. At one time it was commonly held that they were essentially Greek in their background, and a product of a later time, which of course is contrary to the idea that they are the Word of God. The similarities in phraseology between the Qumran texts and the Scriptures do not indicate a link between the Dead Sea sect and the early Christians, but do establish that they both come from the same background.
2. It was at one time alleged by scholars that the idea of a personal Messiah who would come to the earth was an invention by Christians, writing the books of the New Testament after the first century. The Jews, it was alleged, did not have such expectations from their study of the Old Testament. The Dead Sea Scrolls show that this was not so; as stated above, there are many references in them, based upon the Old Testament, to a Messiah whom they expected to come, though their views do not always conform to what the New Testament teaches, as we might expect.
3. It is accepted as a fact by most scholars that Isaiah 40-66 was not written by the prophet Isaiah but at the time of the return from captivity, and that the book of Daniel was written in Maccabean times. They say this because both books contain clear predictions of events later than the time of the prophets whose names they bear. The Isaiah scroll discovered in a cave by the Dead Sea is dated to the second century B.C. or earlier, about a thousand years before the previous earliest known manuscripts. Yet there is no indication that the writer of the scroll considered there to be two books of Isaiah; chapter 40 begins at the bottom of a page. In the case of Daniel, for which there are twenty fragments of eight different manuscripts, some of the manuscripts are dated to the time when the book was allegedly first composed. In the case of other books which were once dated by some scholars to Maccabean times, such as Ecclesiastes and Chronicles, scholars have declared that the discoveries of parts of these books amongst the Dead Sea Scrolls has killed this idea altogether, but, inconsistently, they will not accept this about Daniel because it would mean admitting that the book predicted the future.
4. Scholars once thought that the Jews of the first century had abandoned Hebrew for Aramaic, and that Hebrew was revived by the later rabbis as a religious language. Yet Paul, we are told, spoke Hebrew to people who thronged the temple courts (Acts 21:40; 22:2). The Dead Sea Scrolls are in three languages, Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic, with Hebrew being the commonest, and most scholars now think that Hebrew was commonly used at the time of Jesus.
5. From about A.D. 150 onwards Christianity was strongly affected by Gnosticism. Scholars have taken the view that some passages in New Testament epistles oppose Gnostic ideas that were beginning to enter the ecclesias, for example, Paul’s condemnation of asceticism and the worship of angels in Col­ossians 2:18-23, and John’s condemnation of those who denied that Jesus Christ had come “in the flesh” (1 Jno. 4:1-3). This was used as an argument for dating these epistles to the second century, thus denying their authenticity. Furthermore, the context of the Colossians passage, for example, contains clear references to Judaistic practices, yet Gnosticism, it was alleged, was the product of Greek thought, influenced by the Zoroastrians of Persia. Some of the Dead Sea writings, however, contain ideas similar to those of the Gnostic’s, indicating that such ideas were to be found in the Judaism of the first century, or at least parts of it. This explains why New Testament epistles seem to be countering both Judaistic ideas and Gnostic ideas in the same context, and destroys a scholarly argument against the authenticity of some New Testament epistles.