Dead Sea Scrolls Quotes

The greatest importance of the Dead Sea Scrolls...lies in the discovery of biblical manuscripts dating back to only about 300 years after the close of the Old Testament canon.

Canceled checks will be to future historians and cultural anthropologists what the Dead Sea Scrolls and hieroglyphics are to us.

His prime resource is the leaky vessel of is own memory. At times he views it thus, quite literally- as some old pail with holes and rusted seams. Alternatively, he imagines an extensive manuscript of which there survive only a handful of charred fragments; it is like trying to piece together the Gospels from the Dead Sea Scrolls....

The best evidence is the fact that this book predates Jesus and gives a multitude of prophecies for him. The Dead Sea Scroll copies of Enoch were found to predate Jesus and belong to the Essenes. This was a group of Jews that broke off from the mainstream and lived in various caves before Jesus was born.

Scholars call it [the Torah] the Masoretic text. The Masoretes were Hebrew scribes of the first centuries of the present era. They fixed the wording and spelling of the Bible; since then it has not changed. It has long been a matter of critical controversy as to just how accurate the Masoretes were; for one thing, did they have a true text from ancient sources, or did they invent and corrupt? Opinion has swayed back and forth on this point. The excitement over the Dead Sea Scrolls came in part from their substantial authentication of the Masoretic Isaiah.

A life without a storm would lack drama. Pounding waves of a tempestuous sea test a person’s mettle. A fearless sailor climbs the rigging and shouts out at the top of their lungs into the wind and rain whipping across their face that they will not go quietly into the good night without a fight.

18 NEVER PAY YOUR LAWYER BY THE HOUR Incentive Super-Response Tendency To control a rat infestation, French colonial rulers in Hanoi in the nineteenth century passed a law: for every dead rat handed in to the authorities, the catcher would receive a reward. Yes, many rats were destroyed, but many were also bred specially for this purpose. In 1947, when the Dead Sea scrolls were discovered, archaeologists set a finder’s fee for each new parchment. Instead of lots of extra scrolls being found, they were simply torn apart to increase the reward. Similarly, in China in the nineteenth century, an incentive was offered for finding dinosaur bones. Farmers located a few on their land, broke them into pieces and cashed in. Modern incentives are no better: company boards promise bonuses for achieved targets. And what happens? Managers invest more energy in trying to lower the targets than in growing the business. These are examples of the incentive super-response tendency. Credited to Charlie Munger, this titanic name describes a rather trivial observation: people respond to incentives by doing what is in their best interests. What is noteworthy is, first, how quickly and radically people’s behaviour changes when incentives come into play or are altered and, second, the fact that people respond to the incentives themselves and not the grander intentions behind them.

That was Ingrid Magnussen. She made up rules and suddenly they were engraved on the Rosetta Stone, they’d been brought to the surface from a cave under the Dead Sea, they were inscribed on scrolls from the T’ang Dynasty.

The passage of time will ultimately obliterate the pallid signs of my toneless existence. My faint light will disappear entirely in the ebb and flow of the sprawling continuum of time, the impeccable sea of perpetuity that yawning encasement serves as the impeachable mantel for the inescapable predicament that horns the human condition.

years ago one of the translators working on the original Dead Sea scrolls, Professor Schonfeld, discovered a recurring cipher in some texts. A hidden language, if you like. He called it the Atbash Cipher. Ever heard of it?” Savage nodded. “Sure. I thought it was found in scrolls written in Hebrew.” “It seems it may occur in Aramaic texts too.

The sun is sitting on whom I was in order that I can become the type of person that I wish to be. The beauty of twilight is that it enhances everything. Personal change requires the courage to let go of personal security and venture into a new worlds. I look forward exploring personal thoughts and behaviors, and probing community customs and rituals. I hope to meet new people, expand knowledge of the world, eclipse my egoistical way of living, and devolve a lifestyle that in is synch with the natural rhythmic flow of that governs all lifeforms that inhabit this crusty rock and the watery world of rivers, seas, and oceans. I resolve to accept witnessing the splendor of nature as sufficient to satisfy all my wants and desires while also seeking to increase self-control, and attempt to sprinkle kindness upon the doorsteps leading to other people’s hearts.

And what shall man be called … wise and righteous,

I am interested in the literature and religion of ancient Israel. I focus on biblical law in its ancient Near Eastern context and on the way that biblical law was later reinterpreted in the Dead Sea Scrolls and other Second Temple literature. I have also explored the relation of the Bible to later western intellectual history. In my latest book, A More Perfect Torah: At the Intersection of Philology and Hermeneutics in Deuteronomy and the Temple Scroll, I explore the relationship between biblical composition history and its reception history at Qumran and in rabbinic literature. At the University of Minnesota, I have department affiliations with the Center for Jewish Studies and the Program in Religious Studies and am also an affiliated faculty member of the Law School.

[Professor Greene's] reaction to GAMAY, as published in the Yale Daily News, fairly took one's breath away. He fondled the word "fascist" as though he had come up with a Dead Sea Scroll vouchsafing the key word to the understanding of God and Man at Yale. In a few sentences he used the term thrice. "Mr. Buckley has done Yale a great service" (how I would tire of this pedestrian rhetorical device), "and he may well do the cause of liberal education in America an even greater service, by stating the fascist alternative to liberalism. This fascist thesis . . . This . . . pure fascism . . . What more could Hitler, Mussolini, or Stalin ask for . . . ?" (They asked for, and got, a great deal more.) What survives, from such stuff as this, is ne-plus-ultra relativism, idiot nihlism. "What is required," Professor Greene spoke, "is more, not less tolerance--not the tolerance of indifference, but the tolerance of honest respect for divergent convictions and the determination of all that such divergent opinions be heard without administrative censorship. I try my best in the classroom to expound and defend my faith, when it is relevant, as honestly and persuasively as I can. But I can do so only because many of my colleagues are expounding and defending their contrasting faiths, or skepticisms, as openly and honestly as I am mine." A professor of philosophy! Question: What is the 1) ethical, 2) philosophical, or 3) epistemological argument for requiring continued tolerance of ideas whose discrediting it is the purpose of education to effect? What ethical code (in the Bible? in Plato? Kant? Hume?) requires "honest respect" for any divergent conviction?

There arose a riot among the Jews and Scribes and Pharisees, saying that the whole people was in danger of looking for Jesus as the Christ. So they assembled, and said to James, ‘We beseech you to restrain the people, who are going astray after Jesus as though he were the Christ.

Bradshaw. That Dietz would pretend he existed, and got them all those sensational scoops when she knew— That instant, she knew. She felt the goose pimples grow on her arms, and her fingers clenched the steering wheel more tightly as her body went rigid. It was coming to her in a rush, the incredible answers to the questions that she had been asking herself in these last weeks. Like a streak of lightning throwing a bright, stark light on a dark area, illuminating all that had been hidden so long. In those stunning moments of revelation, Victoria could see the whole truth. It was too shocking, even horrifying, to believe, but it was the truth, there could be no other. It was coming to her—who Mark Bradshaw was; why she and Nick had always been sent to scenes where terrorism was about to happen, to file advance background stories where terrorism would occur; how the Record had obtained exclusive stories on the kidnapping of the Spanish king and abduction of the UN secretary-general and theft of the Dead Sea scrolls and murder of the Israeli prime minister and near kidnapping of the Pope in Lourdes; why Carlos was not being picked up and jailed; why she had abruptly been ordered to leave Paris and return to New York.

I cannot concern myself with the intolerable affections and frivolous actions of a cruel, selfish, and litigious society. I must treasure the invisible muteness and inherent intelligence that nature blessed me with at birth. I shall endeavor to find beauty in living, striving, suffering, and dying in nature’s glorious wonderland of grasslands, forest, rivers, and seas situated under an of infinite canopy of glittering stars. Perhaps when I reach the end of this long scroll I will finally leave behind me the tragic sense of ignobly that haunts my nights and begin living in a world filled with infinite sunshine and boundless delight.

Self-questioning is bound to arise at the outset of any worthy quest attempting to gain self-knowledge, and this disconcerting sense of uneasiness will continue to surface akin to a petulant sea serpent until a person undertaking a vision quest either discovers a safe haven or perceptively changes the trajectory of their destructive life.

For we and all the people testify that you are Righteous and do not respect persons. Therefore, persuade the people not to be led astray after Jesus, for all the people and ourselves have confidence in you. Therefore stand upon a wing of the Temple that you may be clearly visible from above and your words readily heard by all the people.16

Lacking natural equilibrium, I used writing as an illustrative means to center myself in a world filled with haziness and uncertainty. My self-drafted obituary will not bemoan death but shall celebrate life by giving heartfelt thanks for all the people that brightened actuality with their kindness, friendship, noble acts of charity, and expressions of universal goodwill. It was a privilege to exist in this wrinkle of time with many people devoted to burnishing the sharpen edges of life. The heavens blessed me with many years to discover why it is beautiful to live and die in a world where the hills and wind, the rivers and seas, stars and moon, and revealing sunlight shall persevere.

There is a way of living life, a mode of being religious that causes destruction wherever it appears. It is the misinterpretation of the concept of holiness. It was certainly an issue in Jesus’ day. The variety of the ‘Judaisms’ of Jesus’ day, the various schools or parties, the rabbinic schools of Hillel and Shammai . . . the Essenes . . . apocalyptic sects, mainstream elite like the Sadducees and marginalized Samaritans alike all held to some kind of holiness code, that behavior which made the people right before God. The Temple itself reflected gradations or strata of holiness, from the outer Court of the Gentiles to the Holy of Holies. This meta-map of the Temple was overlaid on Jewish society as well. Just as there were degrees of holy space in the Temple, so also in society various persons had various degrees of holiness . . . It was a hierarchical model, lived out by every group or party except one, that of Jesus. Yet, oddly enough we do not find this holiness language in Jesus’ teaching. Unlike the constant refrain of holiness in the Dead Sea Scrolls or the later Mishnah, Jesus has another set of lyrics using the same melody. Instead of “Be holy as I am holy” Jesus taught “Be merciful as your Father in heaven is merciful” (Luke 6:36). Mercy was for Jesus what holiness was to many of his contemporaries. Notice the same form is used but the substance has changed. Why is this? Because for Jesus, holiness was not a solution but a problem. Holiness caused ostracizing and exclusion; mercy brought reconciliation and re-socialization. Holiness depended on gradation and hierarchy; mercy broke through all barriers. Holiness differentiated persons based upon honor, wealth, family tree, religious affiliation; mercy recognized that God honors all, loves all and blesses all.

Choosing any particular lifestyle is disquieting. Decision-making requires giving up something and believing in something. I abhor making choices because I am greedy and insincere. I might create a stronger sense of self if I made conscious choices, by selecting what truly matters in my life, by dedicating my very being to a central precept. I remain unengaged with any stabilizing concepts and my self is in a constant state of changing. I spend time composing a self, only to turn about and destroy my unsatisfactory self, resulting in a continual state of making and revamping my sense of self. Just when family members and friends think they know who I am, I drastically change. People cannot love or even profess affection for a flaky person such as me, a Proteus-like elusive sea creature that is in a constant state of metamorphosis, a person they cannot pin down or pigeonhole as a specific type of person. My staunch refusal to commit to any permanent membrane ensures that I will always remain unknown and therefore unloved and unlovable.

The members of the Sanhedrin who met to try Jesus violated ethical standards held not only by Pharisees but even by many Gentile moralists of the period. Trials were supposed to be conducted during daylight, in the normal meeting hall (in this case that was near the temple), not in the leading judge’s home. Whereas Pharisees opposed hasty executions after deliberations, the Sadducees were known for harsh and often quick punishments. The most obvious breach of ethics, of course, is the presence of false and mutually contradictory witnesses. Clearly some members of the Sanhedrin present acted with legal integrity, cross-examining the witnesses, but by Pharisaic standards, the case should have been thrown out once the witnesses contradicted one another (Mk 14:59). The high priest’s plan may have been simply to have a preliminary hearing to formulate a charge to bring to Pilate (cf. Mt 27:1; Mk 15:1; Lk 22:66; 23:1), the expected procedure before accusing someone before the governor. The actions of the Sanhedrin fit what we know of the period. The Roman government usually depended on local elites to charge troublemakers. Local elites were often corrupt, and all our other sources from the period (Josephus, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and Pharisaic memories) agree that the aristocratic priesthood that controlled Jerusalem abused its power against others. A generation later, the chief priests arrested a Jewish prophet for announcing judgment against the temple; they handed him over to a Roman governor, who had him beaten until (Josephus says) his bones showed (Josephus, Wars 6.300–305). Their treatment of Jesus fits their usual behavior toward those who challenged their authority. ◆

What, then, were the original vowels in God’s name? Ultimately, we do not know. During the period of the divided kingdom, the name may have been pronounced something like “Yau,” with the “au” forming a diphthong rather than two separate syllables. Evidence from classical Hebrew (found in both Biblical and non-Biblical texts) and certain Greek renderings of the name, however, have led scholars generally to believe that “Yahweh” was the way in which the name eventually came to be pronounced. More significant is the meaning of the name Yahweh. For this there has been a wide range of suggestions: “Truly He!”; “My One”; “He Who Is”; “He Who Brings into Being”; “He Who Storms.” One of the best suggestions is that the name is a shortened form of a longer name, Yahweh Sabaoth (often rendered in English as “the LORD of Hosts” or “the LORD Almighty”; see, e.g., 2Sa 6:2). The word “Yahweh” itself is most likely a verb. Many other shortened names from the ancient Near East are verb forms, which is exactly what Yahweh appears to be. It comes from the Hebrew verb meaning “to be.” But if the first vowel really is an a-vowel, then the verb likely has a causative sense: “to cause to be.” Thus, a fairly literal translation of Yahweh Sabaoth would be “He Who Causes the Hosts (of Heaven) to Be.” In general, then, the name refers to the One who creates or brings into being. ◆ The Tetragrammaton in one of the Dead Sea Scrolls and in a modern scroll, with the vowel sounds of Adonay added. Wikimedia Commons Go to Index of Articles in Canonical Order 4:3 it became a snake.

A person cannot endure living in a negative manner. I aspire to accomplish more than merely escaping a morose fixation with prior personal failures and living in constant fearfulness of the unbidden future. I seek to rejoice living in the present, embrace living unreservedly, and awaken each day with unbounded joy. I want to learn how to live in the moment unburden by anxiety and discover how to glide smoothly and gracefully through time free of disenchantment. I want to embrace the floating world where the sky, rivers, and the seas arrest my attention. I desire for the majesty and beauty of the mountains and the forests to captivate me. I wish to divert my mind from suffering and enjoy all the scents and sounds of nature. I want to touch the snow, drink the rain, feel the hot breath of the sunshine on my skin, and cool off in a brisk breeze. On a shimmering night, I plan to stare at the stars and run, leap, and dance in a flowery meadow. Renunciation of everything that I previously believed in will not suffice to bring me freedom of the mind, body, and spirit. I aspire to learn how gracefully to accept all of the explicit and implicit duties, obligations, problems, perplexities, paradoxes, and setbacks of a life well lived.

Humble people are respectful and accepting of our imperfect human nature. Many inexplicable components make up the vast sea of humanity. My own psyche contains enigmatic elements. Through conscientious studying other people and examination of my own unfathomable nature, I hope to gain a better understanding of the mystery of existence. There are limitations of human knowledge. We have a rich stable of resources available to us including the opportunity to read great literature, inspirational books, self-help books, scholarly psychology books, and a growing trove of cognitive sciences books devoted to exploring how the human brain works. Despite the illustrious resources that expound upon the desires, motives, and behaviors of the human species, the hardships of life frequently force us to realize we are the principal subject that we must study and understand in order to mend a broken personality. In order revive a deflated psyche and transcend into a better and sunnier version of the self, I need to know myself.

5. The kezazah ceremony. In the Jerusalem Talmud and elsewhere in the writings of the sages, we are told that at the time of Jesus the Jews had a method of punishing any Jewish boy who lost his family inheritance to Gentiles. Such a loss was considered particularly shameful, and the horror of that shame is reflected in the Dead Sea Scrolls.

We came to save the sacred writings. - Essenes to Eleazar, on collecting the Dead Sea Scrolls from the burning Temple. Jerusalem, 70 CE.

One reason we lose friends is that oftentimes we must push off in different directions in order to attain the ultimate visage of ourselves. Comparable to ships sailing across a robust sea, we might share a common bearing with a friend, until we sail away seeking dissimilar ports of call.

And what of Allegro? Shunned by the scholarly community, he left academia to pursue a career as a writer. During his scroll years, he was described as "cavalier, impudent, cheerfully iconoclastic," but in time the hostility of the scholarly community left him "weary and disillusioned." In 1970, he committed scholarly suicide by publishing a book entitled The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross, in which he argued that Jesus never existed but was merely an image produced by early Christians under the influence of hallucinogenic mushrooms, that Christianity began as an orgiastic mushroom cult. In a letter to the London Times, fourteen prominent British scholars, including his old Oxford mentor, Godfrey Driver, repudiated the book and his publisher apologized for publishing it. Allegro remained in academic and literary exile until his death at sixty-five in 1968.

There is nothing as powerful to the human psyche as the mental image educed by viewing a magnificent vista. We comprehend the paltriest of our bodies whenever a single person travels across an open desert or an immense prairie, stands on top of a mountain range, walks in the sand in front of a furious sea, or lies on their back and takes in the magnificence of the misty span of the Milky Way. Each act of magnification places us in touch with the finiteness and irrelevance of our trifling personhood. We can only view the broad expanse of the desert and steppe, the sheerness of a mountaintop, the immensity of the sea, and the immeasurable vastness of the galaxy with an overpowering sense of both horror and awe as their grand span transcends human scale. The overpowering physicality of these vistas stands as a testament to their cold indifference to the mortality of humankind. The sheer immensity of nature’s breadth beseeches us to consider the unthinkable: we are transient beings. We are mortal; we are mere sparklers burning fitfully until our spurting light completely fizzles out.

In its account of the early days of the Maccabean revolt, 1 Maccabees 2: 42 records that Mattathias and his followers were joined by a company of Hasidim. This was a group, which emerged or became prominent at this time, of faithful Jews who were opposed to Hellenization. It is possible that both the Pharisees and the Essenes emerged from among the number of the Hasidim. It was during the period of Hasmonean rule that a person known as the ‘Teacher of Righteousness’may have led a group of people, probably Essenes, into the Judean desert and established the community at Qumran—on the north-west shore of the Dead Sea—which is associated with the ‘Dead Sea Scrolls’.

And with thee is Wisdom, which knoweth thy works, and was present when thou wast making the world,

[T]here is another explanation for why these scriptures are so different. With the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls (texts that date to the first and second centuries), scholars learned that it was a common practice for religious leaders to alter accepted religious texts. As each great religious leader came along, an edited version of existing texts (including Old Testament texts) might be produced emphasizing the “correct” interpretation of that text according to the insights of the current religious leader. The new texts were not simply a commentary on the verses; rather, verses could be added, eliminated, or otherwise altered in order to convey the desired meaning. In other words, a prophetic leader would take Solomon’s sword to the accepted text and change things he did not agree with or expound on other teachings. This was a traditionally accepted way of sharing religious insights as well as a means of showing reverence to the prophetic, religious leaders of their day. It was a common practice among the ancient Hebrews. For example, among the nearly 900 texts discovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls, there are 15 different copies of Genesis, 21 different copies of Isaiah and 36 copies of Psalms. Among the multiple copies of the Old Testament book of Jeremiah, some copies vary in length by as much as 15% because of these changes and alterations. And so, the religious texts during and after the time of Jesus were altered, sometimes unintentionally, sometimes intentionally. This explanation helps us understand the errors and inconsistencies in the texts, but it further undermines the argument that the Bible is inerrant.

Cursed

The Dead Sea Scrolls of Qumran  evidence a preoccupation with demonology that includes reference to this very Isaianic passage. In The Songs of the Sage, we read an exorcism incantation,   “And I, the Instructor, proclaim His glorious splendor so as to frighten and to terrify all the spirits of the destroying angels, spirits of the bastards, demons, Lilith, howlers, and [desert dwellers…] and those which fall upon men without warning to lead them astray[18]   Note the reference to “spirits of the bastards,” a euphemism for demons as the spirits of dead Nephilim who were not born of human fathers, but of angels.[19]

The Word does not change. The Dead Sea scrolls, archeology, modern science—they do not change the Bible; they confirm it.

Pumpkin Pie to Die For My landlord looked worse for wear But the greedy bitch couldn't less care. Antiquated, dilapidated and moth-eaten, She kept on tickin' despite time's beatin'. Antediluvian, menopausal and off the pill, Senescent, unpleasant and over the hill. Frazzled, frayed and full of holes, Tattered, shredded like the Dead Sea Scrolls. That creaky fossil just wouldn't die, She'd ask me for the rent and wouldn't repent, So I brained her with a 9-iron And made pumpkin pie.

Perhaps there is another reason we are told so little about these people we meet ever so briefly. It raises our curiosity and, in order to satisfy our curiosity, we must go beyond what we are told and ask questions. Take, for example, John the Forerunner. We are told more about John than most you will meet, yet we are told very little. We know Mary and Elizabeth were relatives. We know that Mary visited Elizabeth when they were both pregnant. Does this mean that Jesus and John grew up together? They lived eighty miles apart, a significant distance in that time. How often did they see one another? Jesus grew up in the village of Nazareth in a northern area called Galilee. John lived south in the hills of Judea, practically growing up in the wilderness. Were one or both influenced by the Essenes who had withdrawn into the desert to live in simplicity and purity and to usher in the coming of the Messiah? The wilderness was their home and they lived near Qumran. Here the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered by a shepherd boy in 1947.

One of the Dead Sea Scrolls written in the first century B.C., reinforces this ancient Jewish interpretation of Psalm 82 as punishment focused on the divine council of gods, with Satan as their chief, allotted judicial authority over the nations:   its interpretation concerns Satan and the spirits of his lot [who] rebelled by turning away from the precepts of God to … And Melchizedek will avenge the vengeance of the judgements of God … and he will drag [them from the hand of] Satan and from the hand of all the sp[irits of] his [lot]. And all the ‘gods [of Justice’] will come to his aid [to] attend to the de[struction] of Satan.[15]

The earliest known copies of Jewish Scriptures in Hebrew dated to the tenth and eleventh centuries CE, and among them the differences were mostly small and insignificant. Taking them as witnesses to the earlier texts from which they were copied, it seemed logical to conclude that these many homogeneous texts must have derived from a common original via a highly accurate scribal tradition. But evidence from the Dead Sea Scrolls seems to contradict this conclusion. Among the hundreds of biblical manuscripts discovered there, many of which are more than a thousand years older than anything scholars had ever seen before, we find not uniformity but diversity, including many significant differences. The logical assumption now is that Jewish Scriptures became more uniform and free of variants over time, as scribes gradually established a more or less standard edition.

Each generation produces its oracles and sages, independent thinkers whom serve as cultural bearers. Every generation produces perceptive individuals whose special radiance answers the trumpet call of the pernicious challenges bestowed by their times. These compassionate mavens provide worthy insights on humankind’s gallant attempt to escape its balmy pond of alienation and frigid sea of desolation. Conversations conducted by past and present essayist speaking in consonance between parallel times judiciously reflect the polyphonic cadence of robust jubilation wrought through living purposefully. The coruscating voices of the muses from times of yore manufacture the accordion spine of humankind’s expanding éclat anthology.

Reading, writing, listening to music, skipping rope, flying kites, taking long walks along the sea, hiking in the crisp mountain air, all serve a joint purpose: these self-initiated acts free us from the drudgery of life. These forms of physical and mental exercises release the mind to roam uninhibited, such collaborative types of mind and body actions take people away from their physical pains and emotional grievances. A reprieve from the crippling grind of sameness allows personal imagination to soar. Imagination, a form of dreaming, is inherently pleasant and restorative. It is within these moments of personal introspection stolen from the industry of surviving that humankind touches upon the absolute truth of life: that there must be something more to living then merely getting by; the fundamental human condition thirsts for a way to improve upon the vestment that shelters our self-absorbed lives.

Perhaps, then, there’s another story to be told, a story about the dangers of allowing the obsession with texts and interpretations to cloud the profound simplicity of faith. We may never know with any real certainty if the manuscript, or the Secret Gospel it quoted, was genuine. But we don’t have the original text of any of the Gospels, do we? Seen in that light, at best the lack of academic inquiry into the professor’s find represents a stubborn refusal to deal with information that might challenge deeply held personal convictions. At worst, it’s about power and preserving it. I mean, think of all the volumes written about the Dead Sea Scrolls. Everyone is entitled to their perspective, and historical texts should be examined with academic rigor. Yet if we lose faith, or belief, or our common humanity in the process, haven’t we lost what is essential?

What is more, the early Church knew far more Gospels than those that eventually came to be included in the New Testament. Sadly, most have not survived the centuries. But they have turned up in this part of the world with incredible regularity, particularly in the period following World War II. The Dead Sea Scrolls themselves were found around that time, as was the so-called Gospel of Thomas.

Who me? I play scales. The scales of dead fish of oil-slicked seas. My sister blows wind through the hollows of fallen trees. And we are the echoes of eternity. Maybe you’ve heard of us. We do rebirths, revolts, and resurrections.

The Book of Enoch is an ancient Jewish text, which indeed elaborates on the cryptic verse from Genesis 6:4: “The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterwards—when the sons of God went into the daughters of men.” While scholars disagree about when the book was actually written (with some putting it at ca. 300 B.C.), the book is cited in the New Testament Letter of Jude and the First Letter of Peter, and copies of it were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls. The book was clearly known to first-century Jews and Christians but was considered apocryphal by St. Augustine, among others, and disappeared for more than a thousand years. By the tenth century, the Book of Enoch would have been considered a lost work of scripture, only to be rediscovered centuries later, in 1773, by the Scottish explorer James Bruce during his travels in Abyssinia (Ethiopia).

The Dead Sea Scroll Deception),6

The Dead Sea Scrolls predated the earliest extant text—Masoretic—by more than a millennium.3 Yet when compared to one another, differences in style and spelling were noted but no significant difference in substance.

Matthew has also juggled the most favorable readings from various avail able editions and translations of the Old Testament to arrive at a reading of each prophecy that will best match the "fulfillments"! [...] Matthew quotes the Greek Septuagint translation of Isa. 7:14 ("Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and you shall call his name Emannuel"), already a complex and redacted passage in Isaiah. In Isaiah's context the oracle evidently means to assure the chicken-hearted King Ahaz that God would intervene on behalf of Judah in a matter of a very few years, no more than required for a child, soon to be conceived, to grow to the age where he can decline baby food he doesn't like. Assyria will by then have wiped the allies Samaria and Syria off the map. Obviously Isaiah cannot have intended this prophecy to predict events in the life of Jesus more than seven centuries later. Matthew cannot have thought that he did. Like the authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls, he must have imagined the verse contained a hidden message, only newly discernible in light of the advent of Jesus the Messiah. [...] And in this context, it is important to know that the word translated "virgin" in the King James and New International Versions is the Hebrew almah and means the same as the ambiguous word "maiden," not necessarily innocent of sexual intercourse, [...] Matthew, though, chooses to quote not the Hebrew but rather the Septuagint Greek version where the word parthenos is used. This Greek word is usually thought to have the narrower meaning "sexually virginal." Since Matthew seems to want to tell us that Jesus was conceived virginally, miraculously, he prefers using a version of the Bible that seems to contain an appropriate prediction.

Sumerian king list, which lists Gilgamesh among the kings of Uruk, identifies him as “the son of a spirit” or a “ghost.” The Book of the Giants from the Dead Sea Scrolls identifies Gilgamesh as one of the Nephilim. Genesis can, therefore, be seen to be interpreting what was, for its original hearers, the historical record of gods and kings through a very different theological lens.

The night before flying to New York, I watched Bowie's brief performance as a serene, pragmatic Pontius Pilate in Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ. 'That's a strange movie to watch before going on a plane flight,' Bowie laughs. 'It's like, shall we find out—is there a God?' Then, as if moving on to the next logical topic, Bowie says, 'I can't wait to see the other 10 percent of the Dead Sea Scrolls. They're in fragments, of course, kind of a Bill Burroughs effect...' and he recounts for me a certain conspiracy theory ('a '70s thing') about a secret section of the Dead Sea Scrolls supposedly written by a Jesus who'd escaped from the cross and ended up dying a revolutionary at Masada. This secret stuff is, according to the theory, held in the Vatican and shown only to each new Pope on the day of election. But what on earth, I ask, could the big secret be anyway? 'Oh,' laughs Bowie, 'that there really was a Brian.

Former unbelievers who respond positively to the Gospel before entering eternity will never need to have any part in the eternally burning Lake of Fire. Anyone can make today be the day he or she chooses to cast his or her sins on the cross, just as the children of Israel cast their sacrifices for sins on the altar, and allow Jesus to bear the burden. His death, burial, and resurrection have already taken place. The work is already finished. All a person needs to do now is trust Jesus for salvation. It doesn’t get any simpler than that.

And he said to them, “Is a lamp brought in to be put under a basket, or under a bed, and not on a stand? For nothing is hidden except to be made manifest; nor is anything secret except to come to light. If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear.” And he said to them, “Pay attention to what you hear: with the measure you use, it will be measured to you, and still more will be added to you. For to the one who has, more will be given, and from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away.” (Mark 4:21–25, NET)

How can the United States, supposedly a world leader in human rights, justify firebombing Tokyo and the saturation bombing of Dresden near the conclusion of World War II? Why does the slogan an eye for an eye always trump the mantra of turn the other cheek? Why does the cry for revenge always ring louder than the plea for peace? How can the League of Nations idly standby for decades why merchants of greed cleared the rainforest, polluted the skies and streams, and decimated species after species of plants, animals, and sea life? If human beings are inherently kind and God serves as a symbol of human being’s charitable impulse, there would be no warfare.

The Dead Sea Scrolls contain biblical texts that represent an earlier stage of the transmission of the Hebrew text. They have been consulted, as have been the Samaritan Pentateuch and the ancient scribal traditions concerning deliberate textual changes. The translators also consulted the more important early versions—the Greek Septuagint, Aquila, Symmachus and Theodotion, the Latin vulgate, the Syriac Peshitta, the Aramaic Targums and, for the Psalms, the Juxta Hebraica of Jerome.

For example, in Exodus 21:33 or in 2 Chronicles 16:14. However, seeing as this description of boring holes in the Messiah’s hands and feet sounded a little too much like Jesus for the rabbis, they decided to shorten the letter VAV ( ו ) to become the letter YUD  ( י ). Any person who reads any ancient version of the Old Testament, such as the Septuagint or the Dead Sea Scrolls, will see for themselves that the original text doesn’t say “like a lion”, but rather “they have bored / pierced.” The Dead Sea Scrolls, dated hundreds of years before the time of Jesus or as in the New Testament, were written at least 1,200 years prior to the Masoretic text.

The proper liturgical calendar of only 364 days (4Q394 1:1–3)

She was a good cradle Catholic who had been confirmed and received a certain amount of instruction, but she had never been forced to argue her case out with a confirmed and determined pagan. Atheists were often easier to deal with since for most of them the Dead Sea Scrolls, The Inquisition and the Knights Templar Barnes, Alexander. The Man who Stole Stonehenge (Kindle Locations 970-972). Unknown. Kindle Edition.

I am only offering to my reader an opportunity to expand their thoughts and maybe reach a deeper understanding of a particular word used in our English Bible. To build in you the same desire that this dusty old biblical language teacher has of reaching a deeper understanding of God’s Word through the guidance of the Holy Spirit. I do admit to being speculative in many of my conclusions and ask the reader to keep this in mind as they read this book. However, my speculations are based upon my biased personal experience with a God that I believe with all my heart loves me and that I love in return and hold dear as life itself. It would do well for orthodox Christians, those who embrace the Word of God as truly inspired and God-breathed, to follow the ongoing research and latest discoveries from archeology and the Dead Sea Scrolls. Many scholars do this research for academic reasons, and hence the subtle “I love you” message from God may go totally unnoticed to them, but not to one whose heart is seeking those words for the God that they also love.

Only regarding the Spirit. Paul says that this appointment as Son-of-God-in-Power “pertains to the Spirit of Holiness.” On the basis of Old Testament evidence and the Dead Sea Scrolls, most scholars agree that “Spirit of Holiness” was a Hebraic way of referring to the Holy Spirit.

The three most important of these older Bibles are known as the “Masoretic Text” (MT), the “Septuagint” (LXX), and the “Samaritan Pentateuch” (SP).

*The Dead Sea Scrolls. These were copies of the Old Testament books found in an area called Qumran. It’s located at the northern end of the Dead Sea. Since these were copies of the Old Testament from before Jesus was born, we know the prophecies about Him weren’t “written in” later: Isaiah 7:14—The Messiah will be born of a virgin. Isaiah 53—The Messiah will have the iniquity of us all laid on Him, and he will take the sin punishment for His people. Daniel 9:24–27—Daniel predicts, to the exact day, when Jesus will ride into Jerusalem (as Messiah the Prince) and then die. Daniel claims that this will happen exactly 483 years after the command to rebuild Jerusalem was given. Check it out for yourself. Micah 5:2—The Messiah will be born in Bethlehem. Genesis 49:10—The Messiah will be from the tribe of Judah. 2 Samuel 7:12—The Messiah will be related to King David. Psalm 22:16—The Messiah will be pierced in His hands and feet. Zechariah 9:9—The Messiah will come into Jerusalem while riding on a donkey.

The ontogenesis of our conscious self and the concinnity of our shadow spring directly from our seedlings saturated in the rich milieu of our nation’s external and internal conflicts and our personalized social, political, and cultural interactions. We either actively or passively participate in the explosion of culturally significant experiences. We exist in a fish bowl where the aquatic pool of collective experiences influences us. We are each bystanders in the present chapter of history’s bloodbath, standing either as willing or unwilling witnesses to the vertiginous acceleration in violence that rocks the cradle of civilization. We cannot witness blood spilling in the streets and be present in an age of rampant desecration of forest, seas, rivers, tundra, and deserts of this world without holding ourselves accountable for either our activism or passivity. Our acceptance or resistance to the pervasive cultural chauvinism of our age frames us.

Se o Velho e o Novo Testamentos representam a Revelação Divina, tais investigações não têm importância. Se eles são obra puramente humana, então é a curiosidade humana que nos impele a investigar como foram escritos e qual é sua relação com um culto de imenso prestígio

Song and the lyric poem came first. Prose was invented centuries later. In Israel, Greece, and China came the primal, model lyrics for two and a half millennia. Read the biblical Song of Songs in Hebrew, Sappho in Greek, and Wang Wei in Chinese and be deeply civilized. You will know the passions, tragedy, spirit, politic, philosophy, and beauty that have commanded our solitary rooms and public spaces. I emphasize solitary, because the lyric, unlike theater and sport, is an intimate dialogue between maker and reader. From the Jews we have their two bibles of wisdom poetry, from the Chinese we have thousands of ancient nightingales whose song is calm ecstasy, and from the Greeks we have major and minor names and wondrous poems. However, because of bigotry, most of Greek poetry, especially Sappho, was by religious decree destroyed from the Fall of the Roman Empire to the Renaissance. So apart from one complete ode, we read Sappho in fragments. Yet there survive fragrant hills for lovers and dark and luminous mountains for metaphysicians. Most of ancient Greek lyric poetry is contained in this volume. Do not despair about loss. You are lucky if you can spend your life reading and rereading the individual poets. They shine. If technology or return to legal digs in Egypt and Syria are to reveal a library of buried papyri of Greek lyrics equivalent to the Dead Sea Scrolls or the Gnostic Nag Hammadi Library, we should be able to keep singing and dancing for ten moons straight. For now, we have the song, human comedy, political outrage, and personal cry for centuries of good reading.

There is a Dead Sea Scroll called the Damascus Document. In this scroll, the Essenes of Qumran call the new covenant the Covenant of Damascus.

In the forest canopied with the leafy niche of daily events, a benevolent listener reverberates in the canonical poetry of the ages humming irrepressible visceral contradictions. A squall of tears of bereavement pierces the elegiac sea of a silent night. The red-rimmed eye of sunrise greets us with a torrent of rage spilling over from frontlines of an examined life’s vital quarrels. The flute of life ushers in a welcoming breeze of reassuring resonance.

Similar to a rat stuck on a rickety boat lost at sea, many of us feel bollixed in by our wooden shell lives. The chore of resurrecting our abysmal life consists of applying a vulnerary of homeopathic remedies to our self-inflicted wounds, liberally applying the principle that small doses of what makes a person ill also cures them. In order to relive intolerable pressure bearing down upon a person haunted by strife, sorrow, travail, and doubt, a battered soul must muster all their compressed resolve and push back with their time-hardened gristle. We must use all the tools at our disposal in order to survive including tirelessly cultivating our physical hardiness and mental flexibility, and by meticulously engaging in the pursuit of learning. We intuitively seek out bliss and we must be mindful to listen to our internal voice counseling us to attain emotional harmony by living in a synchronized manner with other people and all of nature.

He (her son) is just like his father, doesn't listen to a word I say!

this religious concept becomes evident from Josephus' description of John's baptism: "For thus, it seemed to him, would baptismal ablution be acceptable, if it were not to beg off from sins committed, but for the purification of the body, when the soul had previously been cleansed by righteous conduct" (Ant. XVIII, 117).94 By "purification of the body" Josephus means ritual purity, which was a concept of great importance in the Judaism of the Second Commonwealth generally. This purity, according to John the Baptist, is not obtainable without the previous "cleansing of the soul", i.e. repentance. This idea, that moral purity is a necessary condition for ritual purity, is emphatically preached in DSD, which says about the man whose repentance is not complete: "Unclean, unclean he will be all the days that he rejects the ordinances of God . . . But by the spirit of true counsel for the ways of man all his iniquities shall be atoned, so that he shall look at the light of life, and by the spirit of holiness which will unite him in his truth he shall be cleansed from all his iniquities; and by the spirit of uprightness and meekness his sin will be atoned, and by the submission of his soul to all the statutes of God his flesh will be cleansed, that he may be sprinkled with water for impurity and sanctify himself95 with water of cleanness" (DSD III, 5-9).96 This doctrine leads to the rule: "Let him not enter the water to touch the purity of the men of Holiness, for they will not be cleansed unless they have repented from their wickedness" (DSD V, 13-4; cf. ibid. VIII, 17-18). The regular ablutions of the sect, which enabled its members to touch their pure food97, were forbidden to outsiders (and to members of doubtful behaviour) because these ablutions were not considered valid unless preceded by full repentance. That baptism leads to the remisssion of sins was accepted by Christianity generally (Bul. 135-6), but the idea that the atonement is really caused by the repentance which precedes the actual immersion98 94. The first to interpret the NT correctly on the basis of Josephus's words was E. Meyer (Ursprung und Anfange des Christentums I, Berlin 1924, p. 88). His view is confirmed by the Scrolls. 95. See below. 96. W. H. Burrows, "John the Baptist" in The Scrolls (see note 1 above), pp. 39-41.—See also S. E. Johnson, "The Dead Sea Manual", ZAW 66 (1954), 107-8. 97. See C. Rabin, Qumran Studies, Oxford 1957, pp. 7-8. 98. The outward expression of this view in the baptism of John is the 51 gradually weakened in the new milieu.

Proclaiming Clean Slates to restore economic balance – annulling the accumulation of debts when they grew beyond the ability to be paid – kept pre-Roman civilization financially stables. Mosaic Law placed this principle at the core of Jewish religion (Leviticus 25). Yet modern Christianity all but ignores the fact that in Jesus’s first sermon (Luke 4) he unrolled the scroll of Isaiah and announced his mission to proclaim the Year of the Lord, as the Jubilee Year was known. Restoring the Jubilee Year became the basis for early Christians to break away from Rabbi Hillel, whose prosbul clause was used by creditors to force debtors to waive their rights to a Clean Slate. Jesus’s position – reflected also in the Dead Sea scrolls of the Essenes – prompted the wealthy establishment to fight so strongly against him.