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Dead Sea Scrolls- what did it tell you?

when you learnt of the dead sea scrolls, what did it tell you (from the contents of the discovery)? what did you make of it?

if other such discoveries are made in this current century in Egypt/Israel/Iraq areas related to ancient scriptures, what would it mean to you?

kindly stick to the question only.

thanks
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On a slightly more serious note, one thing people tend to forget is that history was not written to be facts in the sense that it is supposed to be today (which one could argue, is still biased towards whoever is writing it).

Documents written hundreds and thousands of years ago were generally limited to stories by the few people who had the education to read and write.

http://www.biblica.com/bibles/about/3.php
>>The New Testament was written during a much shorter period, i.e. during the last half of the first century AD. <<

That means, at least 50 years after the events of 0 BC/AD took place.

From a logical stand point, any story written 50 years after events occurred are bound to have changed. You cannot even tell a story or joke that will survive in its original form or content for very long if it is not documented immediately.

So, for me at least, I have a hard time taking the bible or any other documents as "gospel".
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The Dead Sea Scrolls are the oldest fragments we have of the Bible,... However, they also belonged to an isolated sect with a political axe to grind,...

Maybe, and maybe not.

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/07/28/biblical-mystery-dead-sea-scrolls-solved/

Some of the physical evidence that was revealed in the documentary, Writing the Dead Sea Scrolls, was compelling. Some of the possible conclusions that the documents came from multiple sources seem very reasonable.

Tom

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>>Well, there were events of 33 AD also that were significant, much closer to the time of writing.<<

Which still does not negate the fact that at least 17 years had passed. As I said, can you remember events in DETAIL from 1993?

Also, after the Kennedy assassination, which I would say was a "memorable event" for most Americans at that time, stories were different on the same day from different eyewitnesses from different vantage points, even with film documentation, ballistics, numerous reports, there is still controversy as to what really occurred.

So, without film and no documentation for years, I have a hard time swallowing anything as being accurate. Also, it depends on perspective. Eva Braun would tell you she had a great boyfriend. So, I would say that reporting could be quite biased.
I really don't thing we shoud be giving a link to anything in Fox News - sorry but they are not a credible channel.
^ agreed.  Fox News is about as credible as the supermarket tabloids who find bigfoot and two-headed babies.   talk about "political axes to grind"

The Essenes, who were responsible for the burial of the DSS and probably the composition of the commentaries and sectarian documents, were a Jewish sect with a definite theological and political opposition to the ruling parties (Pharaisees, Sadducees) in Jerusalem.

as to the suggestion that those who had these documents were murdered, this is complete fabrication/imagnination.

nobody knows what happened to the Essenes.   Many of them lived at Qumran, but many also lived elsewhere. Philo of Alexandria, Pliny the Elder, and Josephus all testify to this group.

They merely disappeared after the destruction of Jerusalem.


>Which still does not negate the fact that at least 17 years had passed. As I said, can you remember events in DETAIL from 1993?

Generalizations don't make good suppositions if you don't understand the culture.  The Jewish culture at that time encouraged memorization and the occupation of scribes required the ability to pay attention to detail.  Just because it is no longer true today does not mean it did not apply back then.  Failure to understand history is a common trend in today's world, but it makes for poor reasoning about the world in the past.
> Failure to understand history is a common trend in today's world, but it makes for poor reasoning about the world in the past.

That of course applies to us all now as well as people living in fairly primitive times thousands of years ago. They were writing/copying wrtings from even longer ago. On top of that travel and communication was slow and and poor which led to rather different versions. The non-existence of science and worldwide knowledge also contributed to the perpetuation of myths and legends. After all if Christ was alive 2000 years ago and there are arguments about what happened and what was reported of the period then all the more questionable were and are writings/reports from 5000 years before that.
Jewish culture at that time encouraged memorization and the occupation  of scribes required the ability to pay attention to detail.  

i'm not sure what you mean by this.  If you mean what i think you mean, that 1st - 3rd Century BCE Jewish Palestine was primarily an oral tradition, that is most definitely not the case.

if we learned anything from the Dead Sea Scrolls, we learned that the Palestine area between the 1st Century CE and 3rd Century BCE was a highly sophisticated literary society, that included written languages of Aramaic and Greek as well as a living language of Rabbinic Hebrew that was both spoken and written.


anushuhana:

are we answering your question?  i feel like we may be getting off track, or focusing on the wrong aspects.

is there anything more particular you want to have addressed?   Are you looking for general observations or do you have a specific background in mind?




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Yes, and I am sure that thousands of years ago, memory and transcribing was 100% but today we are lazy and make typos, spelling mistakes and cannot remember anything. As if nobody asked (see image):


hieroglyphics-4.jpg
Yes, and I am sure that <blah blah blah>

I am sure that are making a lot of baseless assertions founded on your opinions, and posting a lot of commentary irrelevant to the original question.

if you want to continue post misinformation, please start your own thread rather than hijacking this one.

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CCSOFlag,
Has the Dead Sea scrolls prompted you to check out any books that is not part of the cannon? I read that the scrolls had every book other than Esther...
rwj04,
Thanks for asking.
I would be interested in ideas of what experts feel about the 2 issues:
http://returnnow.org/2008/01/01/what-are-the-dead-sea-scrolls-do-they-prove-the-bible-is-gods-word/
1)prophecies written were legit and were written prior to the fulfillment
2)"obvious slips of the pen and variations in spelling"
Callandor
How do you relate http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/1810 to DSS?
>I read that the scrolls had every book other than Esther...

I don't know the answer but I'd be surprised if they contained that much as there aren't that many of them and they can be seen in quite a short period of time quite easily.
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>> who was trying to hijack your thread.<<

EXCUSE ME? That link was in response to the "accuracy" of historians. Just because it does not jive with YOUR personal beliefs, don't put this on me.

Many people are going off on tangents, but you want to single me out when I RESPOND to a post? Look at my original posts. I replied to the subject matter.

The image posted was some humor, which apparently few people have.


In case you didn't notice, I am not the only one "singling" you out for hijacking the thread, so you should try to be accurate about that.  The link I posted was in response to your solitary link, which bore no explanation of why it was posted or its relevance.  If you want to make an assertion, you should do so with explanations, not simple links or pictures.  You'll find that although people here may not agree with you, they can appreciate well-reasoned postings supported by facts.
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>well, maybe if you don't know the answer, perhaps you should  refrain from posting blatantly false information?

Unnecessarily aggressive statement. I have visited the main museum in Jerusalen twice that house and display the scrolls - thanks all the same for your gratutious outburst.
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Anushahanna wrote:I read that the scrolls had every book other than Esther
Yes this is correct for the Old Testament.  The scrolls included all books except Esther.  There are so many more than what's in the canon though.

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>I guess it didnt occur to patrick "I have visited the main museum in Jerusalen twice" that the museum (1) doesn't have all of the tens of thousands of scroll pieces at any given time, and (2) only displays but a fraction of the pieces that they do have.

>wandering around a museum and not bothering to read anything doesn't make one well informed.     I saw plenty of bored tourists visit the DSS, come out saying "meh.  is that it?".   sad, really.

rwj04 please give up your incessant jibes - it's childish.
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rwj04 - Please stop being so tiresome and childish.
to clarify this alleged contradiction, is the detail when Luke claims that

This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.
-- Luke 2:2



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WaterStreet, please do.


<<Edited.  I made the change. >>
anushahanna,

i believe all your questions so far have been addressed.    did the answers you received make sense in the context you expected, or are you still looking for additional information?

please let me know if we've misunderstood any of your questions or if attempts to answer them were incomplete.

rwj04,
you have an excellent mind and open minded thinking through the issues. you have very good understanding and command on the whole topic, on several points.. thanks for your thoroughness.


Your treatment of the census issue was good. When you said " it does not present an irreconcilable contradiction.", do you suggest there could possibly have been 2 census, too, with your understanding?

are you interested in lithography history? what aroused your curiosity to visit the museum in Israel? - because as you said, it does not disprove any previous beliefs held, or prove anything very revolutionary.. so what was exciting for you, in finding that the (messianic) Jews had a good solid circulation of their scriptures?

regarding the prophecies, i think the other author's point was since DSS proves that the 'bible' of that day was not very much altered at all from the 'original' times, it gives credibility for the prophecies. You only mentioned "discovery of the DSS does nothing to enhance or dispel this belief held by Christians." - can you explain why the author's point does not cover for the prophecies? thanks.
Thanks all!
oh, hey, thanks.  i'm sorry i missed your post up there ^^, i wasnt intentionally ignoring you.  i'll come back to it when i get a chance.


it's probably the fault of this EE website's poor User Interface design in how a solution is chosen from multiple answers.

i've had difficulty with it myself.   If you don't get it right at the very beginning you can spend a lot of time dividing up points and then not be able to change which answer is the accepted one.  

it's really a lousy design choice, and EE ought to fix it.
FYI, it was not just a link. I provided an honest answer: It means nothing to me, as I am an atheist.
amenkes,

No problem.


rwj04,

Authors can now select the best solution, even if it is awarded less points than other solutions.

When there is a tie for the highest points awarded, the Accepted Solution becomes the first of these, if the author does not designate the best solution.
water street, yes, i know.  

the problem is, if you're not very careful about how you start the multiple solution selection process, you can easily get stuck with an unintended choice as the "accepted" solution.

then after you've spent 5 minutes dividing all the "assisted" points up, you realize you'll have to start all over again if you want to change who gets the "accepted" credit.   at which point, i would say F- it and leave it as-is, rather than start all over again.

as a designer,  i understand this is a classic User Interface problem, one that tends to occur when the design team fails to formally test use cases.    i've noticed a lot of small annoyances about the EE design, this is one of them.