The secrets of the Dead Sea Scrolls

Good morning again. So we promised a lively story behind the Dead Sea Scrolls and so that's what you will get. There are in fact a number of secrets about the Dead Sea Scrolls and I don't mean that with hyperbole. There are a number of secrets that have only come out in very recent years. The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered from the late 40s into the 1950s. And so starting from before I was born. But some of the secrets of the Dead Sea Scrolls have only become apparent in recent years. And I mean like in the last 10 years or less. And so we'll be talking about what some of those things are. You have in the picture here a few different things.

One is this Dr. Randall Price, your handout, and what I'll be saying includes a lot about him. And there's a reason why I include a lot about him. A few different reasons, actually. Dr. Randall Price is a fellow believer. who believes in the inspiration of the Bible. I've met him several times, and so has Randy. He also believes very similarly and like-mindedly to what we do. He believes in the pre-tribulation rapture. So, at any rate, he's Definitely a fellow believer and very like-minded to what we are.

He has been the last of three excavators at Qumran, the city of the Essenes, and so he finished that up around 2012. and has since been continuing to follow through with a lot of the evidence and that sort of thing. He does, by the way, lead tours over in Israel annually. He's been over there over 100 times. And of course, some of those trips have been extended periods of times where he's leading this excavation work.

The second picture that you see there is Cave 1. There are over 50 caves. So lots and lots of them. This is the first one. Back in the late 40s, there was a Bedouin shepherd, a boy at that time, who was throwing rocks at his sheep because the sheep are easier to direct and whatnot by throwing rocks than they are to try to go over to where the sheep are, right? So he was throwing rocks, and it went into that cave that you see there, and instead of hearing just a rather dull thud, he heard the sound of some jar inside, and that got his attention. So he went inside and found the first of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Here is one example, and this is actually Dr. Price's finger pointing at certain portions of those Dead Sea Scrolls.

Here is Qumran. Qurban Qumran means ruin of the moon and that's an Arabic name. The people who lived there did not call it Qumran, right? But you can see it is just north of Jericho and it is just east of Jerusalem and Bethlehem right on the northwestern part of the Dead Sea. You can see where the Sea of Galilee is there at the north, the Jordan River flowing from Galilee into the north part of the Dead Sea, and Qumran off to the western side of the Dead Sea.

Here would be an aerial view, kind of an oblique view, looking at the excavation at Qumran as it was nearing completion. So this is the excavation is complete. What they've done now is to turn it into an archaeological park so you can go and then walk on walkways and they've got guardrails and things like that so you can look at it without disturbing things. But this is before they put any of that on, the excavation is complete.

So this is the Qumran, the city of the Essenes. And by the way, it was very much contested up until just recently with the completion of Dr. Price's work. whether or not this was actually the city of the Essenes. The kind of time frames are a bit more complex and we'll talk about that briefly.

Here is a reconstruction of some of the different places and it had a flowing you know, stream that went through the city, and so that's been mapped. This is an architectural, archaeological reconstruction of the settlement of the Essenes. It was not a huge city. It was not a city that would be defensible if it were attacked.

Here is closer up now with signs in place and some of the walkways and whatnot. And so it's a place that you can go see now. It's one of the national parks. Dr. Price said that he was told that your work is finished. You finished the excavation. We're not allowing or permitting anymore. It's now at a place where we can have people come and visit it and there's signs and places to walk and guard rails and things of that sort.

This is a history, and by the way this is one of the pages that's in the Dead Sea Scrolls pamphlet that we'll have up here I'll talk about in a minute, and it shows the different occupations over a period of time. It was from 4 BC, right after Christ was born, until 68 A.D., not 70 A.D., but 68 A.D. when the Romans came in and did in the inhabitants of Qumran.

Why? Because they're Jews, right? And it was also indefensible, so they just went in there and wiped them out. They didn't need to have some big battle take place. Now, why am I showing you this picture? is the explanation as to why only one in 17 Essenes, and you will hear it pronounced Essenes, Essens, and with the emphasis on other syllables, right? The emphasis on other syllables. So here, what you see is you see Qumran in the background. In the foreground, you see some rocks. Now why would I show you such a rock?

Here is what happened. People wondered, had the Essenes actually been the ones who hid the Dead Sea Scrolls? And were there actually Essenes in this little development here? Was that actually the home of the Essenes? And one of the ways they got an answer was this.

They found among the Dead Sea Scrolls two places where it said you must go a certain prescribed distance outside of the city to do your latrine duty. And when you're done, you must cover it up and then go back and take a bath. All right. At first, you say, okay, what does that have to do with anything?

Well, one, it confirmed that these were the Essenes because their writings gave the prescribed distance. And then when archeologists came up here and took samples of the dirt at this distance, They found three different species of parasite eggs that only inhabit humans. I know it sounds gross, but anyway, so they're digging up these parasite eggs. I mean, let's face it, they're over 19 centuries old, so they're not alive, so don't have to worry about it. But they found the parasite eggs, and the problem and the reason that the Essenes didn't live very long was this.

The seams would go up to the place where they're supposed to use the latrine, the prescribed distance. They would do their little duty and they would cover it up, rather than letting it be exposed to the sun and the air and that would kill off a lot of the parasite eggs and the bacteria, cover it up, and so the parasite eggs would continue to live underneath the cover of soil. and not get dried up and not let the sun kill them. So the parasite eggs remained alive. Then the Essenes would walk back into camp, and the first thing that they were prescribed to do is to step into the public pool and take a bath, where they would all give one another the same parasites again and again.

And so, they would have a terrible time. And we'll talk about their graveyard. nearby, which has also been excavated. So that's why they didn't live long. Much, much shorter average lifespan than the average Jew in Israel. Now, something else, they would have something very similar to what we would have as the Lord's table, only there would be a banquet.

They would have a banquet in anticipation of the coming of the Messiah. And a lot of people have wondered about it because it's a hundred years before the Last Supper. They would have a banquet in anticipation of the Messiah until He comes. Isn't that amazing? So here they would have this Messiah's banquet. They would have this and they would celebrate the Messiah's banquet at regular intervals as often as you do this. It's very interesting, it is more similar to what we would celebrate if we were to have a meal along with it than what was done even among the Jews in Passover.

Here is a map showing Qumran and then off to one side you'll see all these little dots, that's their cemetery. In their cemetery they found Of course, when the forensic anthropologists go in there, they find out these people are dying, most of them, well under age 40. And they're dying of the parasites. Parasites are killing them off. And so that's what they found. And one forensic anthropologist says he's never seen such an unhealthy group of people as he saw evidence of in the cemetery.

Now, one other thing that cinched it, this is indeed the same group of people who hid the scrolls in the caves, and what did it was this, they found in Qumran an intact oil lamp, and that's what you see here, an intact oil lamp, and that oil lamp They found a very similar copy hidden with the scrolls up in one of the caves. So that tells them, now this is another confirmation, these are the Essenes and they are the ones who in fact hid the scrolls in caves.

But they spent lots and lots of time in their shortened lives, they spent lots and lots of time copying the scrolls. Copying and copying and copying and copying and copying, making lots and lots of copies. We'll talk about how many copies shortly here. Going through, just everything was focused as much as possible on those scrolls. Writing and writing and writing, and the evidence is that they were very, very careful in what they did.

Then they would take the scrolls and put them in jars, which you see off to the side partly hidden, is a lid. So they put them in jars, and they put the jars with lids, and they'd hide them up in the caves. So here would be an example, and so they would say, hey, let's hide some scrolls in all those caves. And we'll hide them here and here and here and here, and so there'll always be some left, right? And so they hid the scrolls in the caves, and they found dozens and dozens and dozens of caves. Some of them closer to Qumran, and some of them farther away.

Now, here's what's amazing. About 1,100, so 1,100 manuscripts in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Can you imagine? That's a lot of copying. Only about one-fourth of them, about 230 of those, are Bible books, and by that we mean Old Testament. Every Old Testament book is represented by what they found except the book of Esther. And in a number of cases, multiple copies of Old Testament books. So you have here a listing, and we'll have other things that will provide such a detail. But you see, for example, Genesis, 25 different manuscripts of at least portions remaining from Genesis.

Another one that was very popular is the Psalms, Israel's national hymn book. And another very popular is Isaiah. Some of the Isaiah scrolls are in very poor condition. Others of them are in amazingly good condition. One of the things I want to go back to here is the biblical books are only one quarter of them. They had twice as many that were what's called the Apocrypha, books that are not regarded as scripture. in general, and pseudepigrapha, which are books which are fake books pretending to be written by somebody otherwise well-known, such as Solomon.

Then you have the sectarian texts, things specific to the Essenes, or Essens, as they're sometimes called. And those are things specific to them. It is from those that they got the two different places that said, go this distance outside of the city to do your latrine duty. And it's from that that they were able to conclude, ah, here is where we can find the evidence of them doing their latrine duty and we can confirm, going just this far out of Qumran, we can confirm these are the Essenes, the same ones that hid the scrolls.

The Dead Sea Scrolls are very significant, even though only one quarter of them, about 230, are Old Testament Bible books, because now with that finding, find copies of the Old Testament that are over a thousand years older than the earliest copies we had before. And it's because of that, if you go to see the Dead Sea Scrolls, they've been announced as the greatest archaeological find of the last century.

So that's something to imagine. Over a thousand years earlier, but here's where it's really big, it confirms that the copying of the Old Testament was done very, very reliably. 95% of the Dead Sea Scrolls are exactly the same. as the copies we have from 1,100 years earlier. And all the differences are differences in spelling and obvious scribal errors. Amazing.

So you'll find, and these are Dead Sea Scrolls in very good condition, you'll find copies of a number of Old Testament books among them, but it's the minority It is only about a quarter of Old Testament books. Three quarters of them are something else. Half of them, more than twice the number of Bible books, you have things that are apocrypha or pseudepigrapha, fake books basically. So some in good condition, some of the Dead Sea Scrolls, you look at them and they're just like little corn flakes that have been burnt.

They're little tiny, tiny pieces and you wonder how they can do anything with them. But even those, they have mechanism for being able to see what those said and put them together. So as you go through the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit, and they're going to change it in June, so you'll see different ones from June to September after the change.

As you go through there, you can remember these things. What you're getting is a number of texts, only about a quarter of them will actually be Bible books, Old Testament books. The rest of it will be things that will give you insights into the Jewish culture. and insights into things that these people, the Essenes, as they're also called, will have here. Now let me introduce to you some of the things that I have here to look at. Here is one copy of a poster, one side. Once I get it back up on the top here, the flip side of it also has some information, so I'll have that available over here.

We have over here and these are almost all replicas. Okay. It's a replica oil lamp It's not exactly the same style but give you an idea replica oil pitcher. I have two replica widow's mites and One genuine widow's might this the only thing up here this genuine right and then this is a denarius, which was the average You know days wages Jesus when he was asked you should we pay taxes to Caesar and He says, show me a denarius, one of these. This is a replica, not the real thing. But show me one of these, whose image is on it, right?

And so this is an example of the coin. The reason I bring those up is because they found coins there at Qumran, and then they were able to use the coins, just like we would now, because there are things that are for a particular period of time, to use them to date the things that they find. They look and they find a coin.

They say, okay, where was that? And they measure real carefully. Where was it located and how deep was it? Okay, and that means this layer is of this age. So they can date things. That's how they dated the synagogue in Magdala, where Mary Magdalene was from. They found coins from Jesus' time in the floor. So you got that.

You also have samples, a couple of modern made, but you can see that this is papyrus, where they take the papyrus, which is a reed, and they press them together at 90 degrees, roughly, and that's what they would write on. So the Dead Sea Scrolls consist of papyrus and vellum, which is goat or sheepskin. Okay? All right. So, After I get this pulled back up.

Now, one more thing that I would ask. These things that are here, we can go ahead and check those out. And there are some good references. What I'd like to have you do is to sign for them, but not take them until everybody's had a chance, so people have a chance to see them. And then when everybody's had a chance, then we can go ahead and go through the sequence. What may end up happening is if we get a lot of demand for things, is we'll order more copies. then people won't have to wait quite so long. Okay? All right.

So anyway, you can go ahead and see the Dead Sea Scrolls at the museum if you like. You can even go twice. You can see them also at the Dome of the Scrolls over in Israel. But also you can study them up close carefully at your own pace and without further expense. by the two links that are at the bottom of the page that I shared with you. And you can see they're very good scans, high resolution scans, where you can sit there and study it and watch it on screen. And if you say, well, I can't read any of that, that's fine. Courtney will help you out with this Hemingway Hebrew. OK? OK. Great. OK.