in 1947 just months before the modern state of israel was to be born a dramatic discovery
came to light a massive cache of ancient documents scrolls discovered in a series of caves in a very
forbidding part of israel in the judean desert not too far from the dead sea hence the name dead sea
scrolls the series of caves were located around a community known as qumran an ancient community
long since abandoned and this promised to be the library of that community and the documents dated
to approximately 150 before the common era to the great revolt of 66 through 73 of the common era
and they promised to shed a tremendous amount of light on the nature of jewish society in this
incredibly important time including a discussion perhaps of what it must have been like for the
early christians in this period so let's have a very quick look at the dead sea scrolls themselves
and ask some questions about who wrote them and what exactly do they say
so here's a map of the modern state of israel on a satellite and as you can see when we zoom in a
little bit the qumran region and the caves are just to the west of the northern part
of the dead sea uh the location of these caves is a possible source of documents was actually
known long before in 1947 and documents would occasionally trickle out onto the black market
but the major discovery came out in 1947. here's a look at the topography of the region you can
see these caves are are far up in the hillside and this would be a place where many outcasts
from society or rebels against the regime like the barcaka rebels would ultimately be hiding
out and they're very difficult to get to and a great place to hide things the arid climate also
helped preserve these documents which proved to be absolutely fantastic as i mentioned the collection
was positively dated from about 135 before the common era to about 68 of the common era which
exactly sandwiches the the late period of the kashmir nayim the reign of king herod the rise
of the rabbis all of these fantastic things and of course the period of the birth of christianity
right up until the great revolt so a very important period in jewish history and indeed
in world history and so what these documents had to say really captured the world's attention one
thing for sure was fascinating early on is that when these documents were painstakingly opened up
it was discovered that they had tremendous number of biblical fragments in there typically not
entire samples of works but there are pieces of the entire hebrew scriptures with the exception
interestingly of the book of esther and there are also many other documents in here that say a lot
about what it must have been like to be jewish at this particular point in history so who were
the authors of these documents especially the ones other than the biblical texts which of
course were copied from earlier texts the we know quite a bit about the qumran community this by the
way is an aerial view of their settlement the documents were found far away in small
caves that were quite inaccessible so obviously they must have stored them there for safe keeping
and this was not actually where they lived they lived down in the valley
in these large communal areas they describe their own community particularly in many of
their manuals of discipline which are recorded in the scrolls and so we get a sense of who they were
or at least how they lived we know that the members of the qumran community were jewish
that they observed communal property that is that they were lived in a kind of if you will a strange
kind of religious kibbutz-like environment where all property was was held in common
but they had a very highly defined sense of religious mores they dressed all in white they
had a very strict regimen of maintaining personal purity with a great series of ablutions after
you know relieving oneself and so on and they had um you know all kinds of rituals about how they
would uh gather in silence and eat twice a day with higher status people receiving the food first
and you know really fascinating kind of things that tell talk that talk to us about the specifics
of their day we knew that we know that they valued celibacy although it's not clear if they were
actually celibate so it may be that celibacy was considered some kind of ideal perhaps after one
had had children of course having children by the way is a very positive ideal in judaism as a whole
and so they would not have been able to exempt themselves from this until after they
had fulfilled that quota at least if they were thinking like the pharisees would in the masoretic
tradition they may be the so-called essenes a mysterious group that are named in josephus and
a lot of the behaviors that they indicate are those that the essenes would have held
in their own documentation they never refer to themselves as scenes though so it's hard to make
this label stick the term essene is of dubious etymology it does not appear to be a hebrew word
uh josephus uses a obviously the greek alphabet is all that survived of his description of them and
you know there's a lot of guesses as to what that name actually could mean but what the
qumran community call themselves are the sons of light they often contrast themselves with other
groups and again it's tempting to try and attach these labels to other groups that we know existed
there are the sons of darkness perhaps those are the sadducees and some theories point to
the possibility that perhaps the qumran community were like disaffected sadducees certainly their
hyper attention to purity issues are not unlike those requirements that would have been
mandatory for the kohanim and perhaps they felt that the perversion of the temple ritual under
herod required them to separate maybe even earlier maybe even during the maccabean period they may
have separated these are all questions they also have a teacher of righteousness which may
have been some kind of like historical figure but it's very difficult to identify which historical
figure would that have been do we have other records of them and they also refer to a group
of people called the seekers of smooth things and some have opined that perhaps this refers
to the pharisees perhaps that refers to the rabbis because there are elements
of the qumran's community behavior which definitely overlap with pharisaic ideals as well
these are all great questions that i'm sure over the next century or so people will discover more
and more there's a lot of fascinating things that are being discovered now for example looking at
the dna content of the animal skins that were used to write most of the dead sea scrolls as others
one of the most famous ones is written actually on copper fascinating uh in terms of the content
what do the dead sea scrolls actually say so first of all the biblical texts are instructive in
themselves it is great to know that the biblical texts that are included in the hebrew scriptures
today were definitely in circulation at the time of qumran but the texts that the qumran community
have are mainly fragmentary they're partial texts and in some cases they are expanded texts there
are larger books of the bible or like a book that we know that is in the bible today but the qumran
version is significantly larger and there's more material in it so there's a lot of material to
study here in terms of who these people could have been and how they fit with the rest of the jewish
world of time but it does indicate that there is definitely a a growing consensus about what
would be canonized as the hebrew scriptures it's generally believed that the full decision was made
uh through the first century again the the talmud does not have any extensive discussion of how
it was decided to include certain books and and others not there are a few uh scattered passages
but but no systematic discussion of it what's more fascinating think about the dead sea scrolls is
that quite often they have their own commentaries on texts like for example a commentary on the book
of nacho which is absolutely fascinating and tells us so much more about how the qumran community
must have viewed themselves vis-a-vis other groups and as i mentioned it's hard to pin down
exactly which groups they're referring to because there's so much euphemistic language
but for sure we can determine that they felt that they were on the precipice of the messianic
age that the messiah would soon be revealed really within their lifetimes and they were preparing
themselves as a community to be caught up in the new messianic transformation this certainly feeds
very well into the notion that the first century was just cooking in terms of a spiritual vortex
and was ripe for the kind of movement that ultimately would express itself in christianity
because the dead sea scrolls are giving us a sense of a population that is preparing itself for this
kind of moment there's also as i mentioned earlier some fascinating manuals of behavior for a conduct
which has overlaps with both the pharisees who are very interested in halacha and personal conduct
and also with the sadducees who are especially involved in issues of personal purity um and
that gives us a general sense i think of what's in the dead sea scrolls there's so much fascinating
research so much that is unknown about them still but i'm very glad to have been able to talk about
it with you for a few minutes let's go back now to judea proper and try to understand something
about the birth of christianity within this larger historical context thank you for watching