Paul and the Dead Sea Scrolls

The Essenes were a Jewish religious group that prospered from the 2nd century BCE to the 1st century CE. They considered themselves to be a separate from others because of their inner life and their knowledge of the hidden mysteries of nature, which were unknown to others. The Essenes thought that they were the heirs of God and to their own civilization. They felt that they were sent out on a mission and that they were true saints and masters of wisdom. They were open to all religions and considered each to be a stepping-stone of a single revelation. They believed that they were able to communicate with angelic beings and thought that they had discovered the origin of Evil on Earth. The Essenes spent most of their time decoding ancient manuscripts and translating them into different languages. The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls caused the Essenes to gain the attention from scholars as well as the world. Many of the documents that were recovered from the caves have been untouched since around 300 BCE, among these documents, were several copies of the Hebrew Bible.

The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered between 1947 and 1956 in eleven caves on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea. They were discovered in an area approximately 13 miles east of Jerusalem. Scholars have identified the remains of about 825 separate scrolls. They are the oldest group of Old Testament manuscripts that have ever been found. The Dead Sea Scrolls are divided into two categories, biblical and non-biblical. The Dead Sea Scrolls give us a glimpse of the past and help us to uncover and understand the roots of both Judaism and Christianity. When the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered many scholars saw a relationship between the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Paulin...

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... belief throughout the land, due to the fact that there were also some major differences between both of the writings.

Works Cited

Benoit, Pierre, Joseph A. Fritzmyer, Joachim Gnilka, Mathias Delcor, Jerome Murphy-O'Connor, Karl Georg Kuhn, Joseph Coppens, Franz Mussner, and Walter Grundmann. Paul and the Dead Sea Scrolls. Ed. J. Murphy-O'Connor and James H. Charlesworth. New York: Crossroad, 1990. Print.

Freedman, David Noel. The Anchor Bible Dictionary. Vol. 2. New Haven, Conn.; London: Yale UP, 2008. Print.

Freedman, David Noel. The Anchor Bible Dictionary. Vol. 5. New Haven, Conn.; London: Yale UP, 2008. Print.

Irons, Lee. "Paul and the Dead Sea Scrolls." Web log post. The Upper Register. Lee Irons, 01 Aug. 2010. Web. 11 Feb. 2011. .

The New American Bible. Kansas: Catholic Bible Publishers, 2001. Print.