Other Interesting Facts

This week I will look at some interesting facts behind the dead sea scrolls. I have already covered many facts in my previous posts but there's always plenty of information out there just waiting to be found.
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The information was easy to find although it did require digging through a lot of irrelevent material.
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The following is a list of facts relating to the dead sea scrolls:
-The Scrolls can be divided into two categories: biblical and non-biblical.
-The Isaiah, which is the most intact scroll, is 1000 years older than any other copy of the Isaiah. In fact the scrolls in general are the oldest collection of masuscripts ever found.
-The Temple Scroll at 26.7 feet (8.148 meters) is the longest scroll in the collection.
-The scrolls contain previously unknown stories about important biblical figures such as Enoch, Abraham and Nooah.
-None of the scrolls mention Jesus or his followers.
-About 40% of the scrolls did not get to be published until the 1980's.

You can view more facts at the following website: http://www.centuryone.com/25dssfacts.html

Resources:

2005, 25 Facinating facts about the dead sea scrolls, CenturyOne Bookstore, viewed on 14 May 2010.
http://www.centuryone.com/25dssfacts.html

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

Conservation

I've just discovered an interesting article, whilst trying to look for some new resources, which is about the difficulties faced in in the conservation and restoration of the dead sea scrolls -it's a bit old but it should be facinating nonetheless. At the time when the article was written one of the biggest threats was sticky tape!

The 4 women in charge of the conservation and restoration of the dead sea scrolls have spent the last 18 years painstakingly trying to remove the stickytape from the scrolls, and I think it's safe to say that efforts are still being made. The sticky tape had just been invented at the time when it was applied to matching fragments. The sticky tape is a problem because over the years it bas penetrated through the tiny parchments which has caused severe disintegration. The link to the article can be found in the resources list.

The picture below illustrates just how tiny some of the fragments are which makes it easy to understand why they used the sticky tape in the first place:



Resources:

Moser, P 2010, 'Battle to save famed scrolls,' Murcury (Tasmania, Australia), 5 March, eLibrary, viewed 25 April 2010.

Handout, 2000, 'This ancient fragment of the Dead Seas Scrolls was written over 2000 years ago. It contains a commentary on the biblical verses of Hosea 2:8-14. In March 2000, The Field Museum in Chicago, Illinois wi,' Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service, 10 March, eLibrary, viewed on the 25 April 2010.

The scrolls

This week I will be looking at the nature of the scrolls. Throughout my research I will be trying to answer the following questions:

What were the scrolls made out of?
What language(s) are the scrolls written in?
When were the scrolls written?
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Again I didn't have a lot of trouble with this week's research. The ebooks so far have been very usefull. Besides the ebooks I was impressed with the crystalinks website because not only was there quite a lot of information about the Dead Sea Scrolls but the pictures were also very interesting.
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The number of scrolls that were found vary between 800-900 documents. It is difficult to determine the exact number because the scrolls have suffered extensive deterioration which has left many of the scrolls incomplete. Some of the scrolls include large portions of the original undamaged text, some include one or more columns of writings and at worst some include only a tiny piece of text. There are about 25,000 fragments altogether.

The closest scroll to being complete is the Great Isaiah Scroll which contains all 66 chapters of the prophecy of Isaiah. The Habakkuk Pesher and the Rule of the Community also come close to being complete. The picture on the left shows one of best preserved scrolls in the collection.

The scrolls were written by a group of Jews who lived apart from the rest of the society because they believed that they were ‘pure’ and that the others were corrupt. The scrolls were written on papyrus between the third Century BC -68 CE in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek. At the time the site was regularly used as a garrison site by the Romans in preparations for their conquest of Masada. The current theory is that the Qumran community hid the scrolls probably as a result of Roman threats during the time of the two great teachers Hillel and Jesus.



Photo of a papyrus plant.

The scrolls can be dated to three periods: archaic (250-150BCE), Hasmonaean (150-30BCE) and Herodian (30BCE -70CE).

Resources:

Lim, T 2005, The dead Sea scrolls, a very short introduction, Oxford University Press, Oxford, viewed 2 April 2010.

Charlesworth, JH 2006, The bible and the dead sea scrolls, vol 1, scripture and the scrolls, Baylor University Press, Waco, viewed 2 April 2010.

Dead sea scrolls, crystalinks, 2 April 2010, http://www.crystalinks.com/dss.html

Cyprus papyrus, wikipedia, viewed Friday 28 2010,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyperus_papyrus