The Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls

This week I will be looking at the scrolls themselves and what they have to say. Throughout my research I will be trying to find answers for the following questions:

What info can be found in the scrolls?
Contraversy
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This was an interesting research week. Like many people I am familiar with works such as the 'Da Vinci Code,' and the claims it makes, so I thought it would be fun to research the facts behind this amazing story. My primary research tool was a book called 'Jesus the Man: A New Interpretation From the Dead Sea Scrolls' by Barbara Thiering. Thiering is a scholar specializing in the dead sea scrolls and throughout her book she looks at the various aspects of Jesus' life, according to the dead sea scrolls, and compares this to the bible.
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The Dead Sea Scrolls have caused a lot of contraversy. Many scholars such as Barbara Thiering claim that the scrolls provide evidence which contradicts the Bible i.e. there was no virgin birth, that Jesus married and had children with Mary Magdalene, and that he did not die on the cross. I have summarised these claimes below:


The Virgin Birth:

As I mentioned earlier the Essenes consisted of two groups: the monastic brotherhood at Qumran which was devoted to holiness and believed that celibacy pleased God, and the
urban sectarians who married and had children and generally followed a very different lifestyle from their piers. Among the second group were the great dynasties, the Zadoks and the Davids, who had once been high priests and kings of Israel. The men from these families believed that sex was defiling and only practised it so that they could preserve their family lines. However there were strict rules about when marriage and sex could take place.

The Essenes followed a peculiar custom when it came to marriage. To begin a couple had to be betrothed for a period of seven years. Then there was a mariage ceremony which permitted them to have sex. This was considered to be a trial marriage which lasted up to three years. Then once the woman became pregnant, they waited until the she had advanced to three months when the chance of a miscarriage occuring was less, and a second marriage ceremony was performed which was permanent.

The rules required that the woman had to be a virgin prior to the marriage. At the time the word virgin was equivalent to a nun. The word was also used in the same sense that it is used today.

So where does the idea of a virgin birth come from? Well if a woman became pregnant during the betrothal stage then it could be said on a play of words that "a Virgin had concieved."

In Jesus' case Thiering claims that Jesus was the son of Joseph, who was a descendant of King David, and not the son of God which is what we are taught in the Bible. Her claims are also contraversial because by the Essene tradition Jesus would also be ilegitimate since he had been born before the second and final mariage ceremony had taken place.


Mary Magdalene

Now what does the bible have to say about the curious Mary Magdalene? The gospel of Philip says that: 'there were three who always walked with the Lord: Mary his mother and her sister and Magdalene, the one who was called his companion." There is also a similar passage: "And the companion of the [Savior was] Mary Magdalene. He loved her more than all the disciples [and used to] kiss her often on her [mouth]."

If Thiering's claims are true then Jesus was following the rules of the dynastic order. Jesus had to marry to continue his family line since he was a decendent of King David.

Acts suggest that Mary gave birth to a girl.



God the Father with SS. Catherine of Siena and Mary Magdalene, by Fra Bartolommeo


The Crusifiction:

The bible and the dead sea scrolls agree on one thing: that Jesus was crusified but the scrolls indicate that Jesus did not actually die on the cross. The scrolls state that after the crusifiction Jesus was offered some wine filled with poison which made him unconcious. However he later recovered from the poison and was rescued from the tomb by friends. Therefore when Jesus "appeared" in a "vision" to Peter and Paul in the following years it was the real flesh and blood Jesus and not some kind of spirit.

The bible's main evidence of Jesus' reserection comes from the fact that the tomb was empty but there are many logical reasons as to why this would be the case.

Resources:

Thiering, B 1992, Jesus the man, a new interpretation from the dead sea scrolls, Doubleday, Sydney.

Saint Mary Magdalene, Encyclopaedia Britannica, viewed Friday 28 May 2010,http://library.eb.com.au/all/eb/article-9051215?query=Mary%20Magdalene&ct=null

The da vinci code, Wikipedia, viewed Friday 28 May 2010, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Da_Vinci_Code