The Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls: Volumes 1-3
Language: English
Pages: 525
ISBN: 1932792783
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
The recovery of 800 documents in the eleven caves on the northwest shores of the Dead Sea is one of the most sensational archeological discoveries in the Holy Land to date. These three volumes, the very best of critical scholarship, demonstrate in detail how the scrolls have revolutionized our knowledge of the text of the Bible, the character of Second Temple Judaism, and the Jewish beginnings of Christianity.
library has been found. And it belonged to Jews. These Jews were neither insignificant nor living only on the fringes of Second Temple culture, as some like G. Stemberger claim.2 Many of the 2. Günter Stemberger wrote that “the Essenes,” although “stimulated by discoveries made during the last few decades…were a rather radical, marginal group” (1). He even calls this position a “fact.” See his Jewish Contemporaries of Jesus: Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes (trans. Allan W. Mahnke; Minneapolis:
out of the synagogue (9:22; 12:42; 16:2). The Greek word for “(casting) out of the synagogue,” a0posu&nagwgoj, mirrors the breaking up of one great and diverse religion, Second Temple Judaism, into rabbinic Jews and Christian JAMES H. CHARLESWORTH 7 Jews; that is to say, essentially the followers of Hillel and the followers of Jesus. Christian Jews in the community or school that gave definite shape to the Gospel of John were apparently being cast out of the local synagogue. They could no
pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 1-932792-20-1 (v. 2 : hardcover : alk. paper) — ISBN 1-932792-76-7 (v. 2 : pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 1-932792-21-X (v. 3 : hardcover : alk. paper) — ISBN 1-932792-77-5 (v. 3 : pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 1-93279234-1 (set : hardcover : alk. paper) — ISBN 1-932792-78-3 (set : pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Dead Sea scrolls—Congresses. 2. Bible.—Criticism, interpretation, etc.— Congresses. 3. Qumran community—Congresses. 4. Christianity—Origin— Congresses. 5. Dead Sea
more and more predeterministic in their approach to the problem of evil and salvation. By contrast, the non-Qumran stream never lost contact with Jewish society; its theology staged the drama of responsible human beings torn between divine deliverance and the temptation of Satan, and eventually focused on a message of salvation for the “poor” at the end of times. The decreasing influence of Enochic literature on the sectarian texts and the absence of Similitudes from the Qumran library— two
homage [cf. Dan 7:27]. The great God is in its strength; 8he will make war for it [Dan 7:21]; he will deliver peoples into its hand [Dan 7:25; cf. v. 22], and all of them 9he will cast before it. Its dominion will be an eternal dominion [= Dan 7:14]. The difficulties of translating the ambiguous passage notwithstanding,49 we can make some fairly certain observations. Regarding context, a seer in the setting of a royal court tells this description of events leading up to the eschatological period