"A woman was created for a man, not a man for a woman" - such a postulate ...
In the spring of 1947, two boys from the nomadic Taamire tribe were herding goats. And quite by accident, in search of an escaped goat, they found a cave. Hoping to find the treasure, they climbed inside - and were greatly disappointed. Instead of gold and precious stones there were earthen vessels with leather scrolls wrapped in linen cloth. An attempt to cut the leather into belts failed - the material was too old and shabby. Then, on the advice of their fellow tribesmen, they sold leather scrolls with incomprehensible inscriptions to a Jerusalem antique dealer ...
This is the official version of the discovery of the Qumran scrolls. However, it is possible that the Bedouins specially combed the caves in search of treasures. In any case, when the opportunity arose to trade finds, they did not fail to take advantage of it. In 1952, an international scientific expedition set out in the Judean Desert in search of new scrolls. And here a real archaeological war broke out between scientists and local tribes. The nomads tried to be the first to take possession of the manuscripts in order to then sell them to archaeologists. Often they were lucky, and scholars had to redeem the scrolls. At the same time, valuable information was lost - in which caves and how the manuscripts were found, how they were located, etc. Therefore, archaeologists, in turn, sought to get to the repositories before the Bedouins did.
The "cold" archaeological war, thank God, did not develop into a "hot" one, but nevertheless brought its sad results. Many legends regarding the Qumran finds are connected precisely with the fact that scientists did not have the opportunity to calmly do their work, and the first found and published manuscripts, as it turned out later, had no direct relation to the main part of what was stored in the caves on the shores of the Dead Sea. The work of archaeologists and the painstaking office work of scientists to decipher and translate manuscripts stretched for four decades. Meanwhile, the sensational-loving public was discussing the "Qumran secrets", which supposedly were supposed to blow up our entire understanding of the era of Jesus Christ and refute the Gospel.
One of the anti-Gospel theses says that many of the things the Gospel tells about were invented by Christianized Greeks, and they could not have been in the ancient Jewish environment. In fact, the Greeks were accused of either inventing or editing the Gospel. For example, the expression "Son of God" is often found there. They said that this expression in relation to Christ did not arise at all in the Jewish environment, but in the Hellenized Christian communities of Asia Minor, that this is a purely pagan motive, inspired by Greek mythology about the supernatural birth of different heroes. Meanwhile, such an expression is found in the Qumran manuscripts, and it refers precisely to the coming Messiah.
How the myth was born
Oddly enough, the main "culprit" for the appearance of misinterpretation was ... the priest. He was a prominent Catholic biblical scholar, head of an archaeological expedition, Father Roland de Vaux. He suggested that the ruins of Qumran are a monastery that belonged to the ancient Jewish sect of the Essenes. In four of the seven scrolls that were found first and immediately published, it was said about the order and life of this sect.
Remnants of fortifications were found in Qumran, and many manuscripts were found in caves nearby. Trying to determine what exactly he was excavating, Abbot Roland de Vaux thought in terms of a Catholic monastery. It is known that medieval Catholic (as well as Orthodox) monasteries were not only centers of spiritual life, but also military fortresses and centers of education, where books were kept and copied. In any monastery, the central place was occupied by the library and the scriptorium (a room for rewriting books). As it seemed to the leader of the expedition, he found all this among the ruins of Qumran. In addition, the life of the Essenes, described in the published manuscripts, was very reminiscent of the monastic way of life.
By itself, the hypothesis of Father Roland de Vaux is quite admissible. However, around the work of scientists who deciphered the manuscripts, there were ridiculous rumors - of the same type as newspaper "sensations" about how Christ was "actually" born, or about the fact that "science has proved" that Christ was visiting the Himalayas ... in a word, something that has nothing to do with real science.
In the first published manuscripts, a certain "Teacher of Righteousness" was mentioned many times. As a result, a scheme arose: monastery + Essenes + Teacher of righteousness. From here were born speculations about a certain "Essene Christ", the stories about which, they say, inspired the authors of the Gospel, telling about Jesus. This myth existed for decades and collapsed only after the publication in 1991 of all the scrolls and the revision of the conclusions made by the archaeological expeditions of 1951-1956.
Of the 900 texts found near Qumran, only 11 were in solid scrolls, and the rest had to be recovered from about 25,000 fragmentary scraps, many of which did not exceed a postage stamp in size. The work on the restoration of the texts was completed only by the beginning of the 60s. And only in the 90s of the last century it became possible to systematize the Qumran scrolls.
All of them date back to the 3rd century. BC - the beginning of the 1st century according to R.Kh. and are written in Hebrew and Aramaic, a small number in ancient Greek. Only a third of them are written by members of various Jewish sects: the Essenes, Sadducees, Zealots, etc. About a third are biblical scrolls, in which all the books of the Old Testament are presented in passages, with the exception of the book of Esther. Their text as a whole does not differ from the standard Masoretic today, but it still has a number of curious discrepancies. About a quarter are non-biblical, non-denominational texts. They are especially interesting because they allow you to analyze the religious beliefs of the Jews of Palestine during the Second Temple period (538 BC - 70 AD). The rest of the texts are too poorly preserved and impossible to identify.
It has been established that most of the scrolls (possibly all) were written outside of Qumran.
What have you dug ...
What does modern science say about Qumran? First, the "monastic" hypothesis of Father R. de Vaux is questioned. The archaeologists concluded that the "monastery" was most likely a well-fortified country estate of some noble Jew. They were engaged in agriculture and crafts. Many luxury items and money have been found in the territory of Qumran. This is absolutely impossible for the settlement of the Essenes, who were a mendicant sect and shunned any connection with the world of material goods.
Secondly, the beautiful theory of Roland de Vaux about the Qumran scriptorium, where the books were copied, did not stand up to criticism. Only one inkwell was found on the ruins, while an examination of handwriting showed that the texts were written by more than five hundred by different people! Even the largest medieval monastery could not boast of such a number of scribes.
Today it is obvious that the Qumran manuscripts are not the result of the activities of monastic scribes, but a library. More precisely, even the library funds, most likely, were taken here from Jerusalem shortly before the start of the siege of the city by the Romans in AD 68. They were taken to different places in Judea and there, for safety, they were placed in vessels, so that they could then be returned and used again. It is even possible that the Jews evacuated the library, which was located directly in the Jerusalem Temple, and that found in Qumran is a small part of it.
The Essenes were finally "evicted" from Qumran after the publication of all the manuscripts in 1991-92, when, following the hypothesis of the monastery scriptorium, the myth that the library belonged to the Essenes community collapsed. About 900 texts were found in Qumran. All of them date back to the 3rd century. BC - the beginning of the 1st century according to R.Kh. Of these, only a few dozen turned out to be "Essenes". In modern parlance, the four sectarian scrolls, which were published first and misled everyone, turned out to be part of the "special depository" of a large library. Basically, the Dead Sea Scrolls are biblical texts well known to us, in which almost all the books of the Old Testament are presented in fragments, as well as non-biblical non-sectarian manuscripts.
The Essenes are a religious sect that arose in Judea in the 2nd half of the 2nd century. BC and existed until the 1st century. according to R.Kh. According to antique authors(Philo of Alexandria, Pliny the Elder, Joseph Flavius, St. Hippolytus of Rome), the Essenes lived throughout Palestine, including in cities, rather isolated communities, which are characterized by common property, collectivity of work and life. They condemned wars, slavery and trade, rejected bloody sacrifices, and had a special ritual of ritual ablutions. Some Essenes were celibate.
The Essenes have long been considered the forerunners of Christians. However, the similarity is purely external. Their religious beliefs and spiritual practices have little to do with the teachings of Jesus Christ.
What have you read
After the publication of the entire Qumran corpus of manuscripts, the answer to the question became obvious: do they refute the gospel story. To the great regret of the fans of sensations: no. Moreover, the Qumran scrolls fully support it. The “teacher of righteousness” turned out to be a character characteristic only of sectarian scrolls, while non-sectarian manuscripts are full of prophecies about the coming Messiah, whom the Jews of that era were eagerly awaiting and writing about. The last texts found in Qumran were created shortly before the birth of Jesus Christ, therefore they very accurately reflect the mood of that era at that time. The Jewish people were waiting for the birthday of the Messiah, but we knew about this even before Qumran.
However, the Dead Sea manuscripts are very clear about why, after waiting for Christ, the Jews rejected Him. Among the scrolls of Qumran were found the manuscripts "The Messianic Collection" and "The Messiah of Heaven and Earth." It is a collection of biblical prophecies and non-biblical texts that show what kind of Messiah the Jews were looking for. And here, again, Qumran gave nothing new. The Messiah from the non-biblical texts of Qumran is a political and military leader who miraculously will defeat all enemies and enslavers of Israel and put the Jews at the head of the peoples of the world.
It is interesting that among the manuscripts there is also the biblical book of the prophet Isaiah, who is called the Old Testament evangelist. It is in Isaiah that prophecies are contained that the Messiah, being God, will become a man, seedlessly born of a virgin, that He will take upon himself the sins of the world and willingly accept death for people. These prophecies are constantly referenced by the authors of the Gospel. But the idea of the suffering of the Messiah was not popular with the Jews. None of the Qumran unbiblical manuscripts contain a description of the Savior's suffering for the sins of His people - only a description of His power, glory and might.
The Gospel Christ, Who came to free people from slavery to sin, Who said: “My kingdom is not of this world”, did not at all correspond to the ideal of the Messiah, Who was expected in Judea at the turn of the epochs. In this sense, Qumran does not add anything new to the conflict between Jesus and the religious teachers of Israel, about which the Gospel speaks and which eventually ended with Calvary ...
This is the result of nearly fifty years of research on the Dead Sea manuscripts. They did not refute the gospel or shake Christianity. Moreover, from the point of view of science, the Gospel has received additional weight, it is once again tested, this time by Qumran. And let some people with esoteric romanticism continue to repeat about the sensational finds in Qumran, allegedly revealing secret knowledge or hidden truth, but from the point of view modern science all these statements are nothing more than obsolete gossip that arose in the 60s of the last century. And in new century they do not need to be pulled.
The term "sect" was coined by Josephus in the 1st century AD. to describe the religious life of the then Palestine and is more consistent modern concept"Religious movement". IN modern world a sect is thought of as something not only separated from the general trend, but also opposing itself to it (for example, the "White Brotherhood" in relation to the Orthodox or Catholic Church, etc.). There was no single general direction in Palestine at the time of Christ, but there was a number of religious movements, not only comparable in terms of the number of members, but also mutually influencing each other.
A long work table with scissors, needles and snow-white sheets of rice paper spread out on it; a few more tables with conventional computers; cabinets with black cardboard boxes and materials for work ...
This is the whole furnishings of a small room in the Israel Antiquities Authority, where the great sacrament of the conservation of the Dead Sea Scrolls is performed. Their discovery is rightfully considered the main archaeological discovery of the 20th century. And the scrolls themselves still contain secrets to be solved.
"The golden hands are urgently required ..."
The history of the discovery of the first unique Dead Sea Scrolls, their acquisition by the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and the subsequent searches for more and more new manuscripts is well known. Unfortunately, since the discovery of these unique artifacts in the Judean Desert, many of them have suffered serious damage.
The first blow to the relics came from the Bedouins who discovered them - they cut the scrolls into pieces, hoping that in this way they would be able to get more money for their sale. But, as it turned out, the restorers who worked with the scrolls made quite a few mistakes at first.
It took a while to understand: the scrolls survived for millennia because they lay sealed in jugs in absolute darkness and the unique microclimate of the Dead Sea caves. Normal humidity, direct sunlight - all this led to their destruction. On top of that, the early restorers of the scrolls glued their fragments with ordinary adhesive tape and placed them between simple window panes. The pressure of the glass, the aging of the glue and the sunlight caused the parchments to darken before our eyes.
It's hard to say what the fate of these historical treasures if in the early 1990s, in the wake of the mass exodus of Jews from the USSR, restorers who had gained experience in working with ancient manuscripts in the best museums in Moscow and Leningrad had not arrived in Israel. Their experience has been used to ensure the preservation of priceless artifacts.
Only women work in the scroll conservation department. It turns out that only female hands can touch the scrolls so as not to harm them. Only they can, with minimal losses, clean them of the glue left by the tape, place them between two sheets of special transparent paper, put them in a frame and then sew the space around the scroll with the finest thread.
Sometimes all the work has to be done under a microscope. The frame is then exhibited in the Israel Museum in a repository that maintains a microclimate that matches the caves of the Judean Desert.
Thanks to the experience and truly golden hands of these women, the process of documenting and preserving the scrolls has been completed over the past two decades. And now they are actively involved in the process of photographing scrolls based on the method of spectral photography, using technology purchased by the Hebrew University from NASA.
From the darkness of millennia
According to historians, most of the Dead Sea scrolls known today belonged to Jews who fled after the Roman defeat of the Bar Kokhba uprising (131-135) to the Judean Desert - to the very caves in which the future King David once hid from his father-in-law, King Saul.
The Jews who took refuge here were not members of the Essenes sect, which is considered the herald of Christianity. But just like the Essenes, they lived in the hope of the coming of the Messiah, who would return their state to them, and lived in a commune, which they called "Yahad" ("Together"). The charter of this commune was found among other Qumran scrolls.
At some point, the Romans found the "Communards" and decided to destroy them.
Foreseeing the inevitable death, the "Yhadovites" decided to preserve the most valuable thing they had - the sacred books. After wrapping parchment and papyrus scrolls in linen cloth, they placed them in jugs, sealed them tightly and hid them in caves. There they lay until 1947, when some of them were accidentally discovered by a Bedouin shepherd boy.
Today, the Antiquities Department stores over 900 such manuscripts, consisting of several tens of thousands of fragments. Several hundred more such artifacts were at the disposal of Jordanian historians. Most of these scrolls are written in Hebrew, the same alphabet that Jews use today, and therefore can be easily read and understood by any Israeli schoolchild. But there are also scrolls written in Greek and Aramaic, as well as the form of the Hebrew alphabet, which the Jews used even before the Babylonian exile (before 598 BC), and dated to the 8th century BC.
The scrolls found include all the books of the Old Testament (Tanach, as the Jews call it), with the exception of the Book of Esther, and their texts practically coincide with the biblical texts known today. Which, in turn, proves that the Bible has come down to our days almost without any changes. At the same time, sometimes there are slight differences in the scrolls from the current canon, and scholars today argue whether it is a question of the scribes' mistakes or we have proof that the biblical text has been edited over the centuries.
At the same time, among the manuscripts, texts were also found that, for one reason or another, were not included in the Old Testament. This is the apocryphal to the Book of Daniel, and the Book of the War of the Sons of Light with the Sons of Darkness, and the psalms of David that were stunning in their poetic power. But, perhaps, one of the most interesting among the Qumran finds is the manuscript of the Book of Enoch - one of the most mysterious and mystical works of antiquity, not included in the biblical canon.
"Bible of UFOlogy"
This is exactly how - "The Bible of Ufology" - sometimes the Book of Enoch (Sefer Hanoch) is called by supporters of the theory, according to which the contacts of mankind with alien intelligence played a decisive role in the development of civilization.
The Book of Enoch is based on the story of how the angels descended from heaven to earth, began to cohabit with earthly women and passed on secret knowledge to people.
There is a mention of this in Genesis, but the Book of Enoch is a detailed and detailed story about how a detachment of two hundred rebellious celestials led by an angel named Shamkhazai descended to Mount Hermon, the main peak of the current Golan Heights.
These aliens not only indulged in love with women, but also taught people different crafts, as well as magic and witchcraft. For example, an angel named Azazel taught people to forge iron weapon; the angels Kochaviel, Tamliel and Barkiel - the sciences of the motion of the stars and the moon and the calendar; Shamkhazai himself gave them knowledge about the magic and healing properties of plants. But at the same time, the righteous Enoch (Hanoch) refused to communicate with the rebellious angels.
Therefore, the archangel Gabriel himself began to descend to him and teach him other secret knowledge - much more true and profound than those that Shamkhazai and his associates imparted to humanity. So Hanoch became the keeper of the secret knowledge of astronomy, cosmology and ways of serving the Creator, which he passed on to his son Methuselah, that to his grandson Noah, and Noah after the flood - Seth, etc., and so this knowledge has been preserved to this day.
Other biblical sources say that Enoch did not die an ordinary death, but was taken alive to heaven, for which a certain luminous object, "like a great fiery horse," descended from above. However, even before that, Enoch managed to visit heaven. Ufologists see in the description of his flight confirmation that Noah's great-grandfather visited an alien ship.
Indeed, the book first talks about a "large round body", as if made of pearls and surrounded by fires and tongues of flame. Nevertheless, Enoch calmly passed through this flame and found himself inside a circular room with many windows through which the surrounding landscape was clearly visible. Then he heard a certain voice, got into another, even larger luminous body and found many rooms inside it, including a round hall, and in the middle of it - a high throne.
“Before us, - say ufologists, -classical description flight on a reconnaissance boat to in orbit spaceship and the control panel of this ship. " The mystics, of course, interpret this text in a completely different way. As, incidentally, the words of another biblical source - the Book of Truthfulness, asserting that, being taken alive to heaven, Enoch received a new body and became an angel-ruler higher worlds named Metatron.
Biblical tradition dates the "ascension of Enoch" 2773 BC, and this is exactly the period of the end of the Neolithic and the beginning of the Bronze Age, when the civilizations of Mesopotamia, Babylon and Egypt make a giant spiritual and technological leap forward. In India, the Harappan civilization arose, and in Britain, by the way, it was at this time that Stonehenge was being built.
So the Book of Enoch really gives a lot of reasons for reflection and various kinds of hypotheses. Meanwhile, the Qumran scrolls are fraught with many other, no less attractive and exciting mysteries, to which we will certainly return more than once.
Peter LYUKIMSON
(7 votes: 5 out of 5)- Brockhaus Bible Encyclopedia
- prot. D. Yurevich
- priest D. Yurevich
- A.K. Sidorenko
Qumran manuscripts- a set of ancient religious manuscripts found in the Qumran area, compiled at the end and beginning (for some reason, this time dates from the period: III century BC - 68 AD).
How does the story of the discovery and publication of the Qumran manuscripts begin?
In 1947, two Bedouins, Omar and Muhammad Ed-Deeb, grazing cattle in the Judean Desert, near the Dead Sea, in the Wadi Qumran region, stumbled upon a cave, inside which, to their surprise, they discovered ancient leather scrolls wrapped in linen cloth. According to the Bedouins themselves, they came out to this cave quite by accident, looking for the missing goat; according to another version, which seems no less plausible, they purposefully searched for antiques.
Unable to appreciate the found manuscripts at their true worth, the Bedouins tried to cut leather straps for sandals out of them, and only the fragility of the material eaten away by time convinced them to abandon this venture and look for a more suitable application. As a result, the manuscripts were offered to an antiquarian, and then became the property of scientists.
As we studied the manuscripts, their true historical value became clear. Soon, professional archaeologists appeared at the site of the discovery of the first scrolls. During the systematic excavations of 1951-56, carried out in the Judean Desert, many written monuments were discovered. All of them together received the name of the "Dead Sea Manuscript", at the place of discovery. Sometimes these monuments are conventionally classified as Qumran, but often only those that were found directly in the Qumran region are so designated.
What are the Qumran Manuscripts?
Among the Qumran finds, several well-preserved scrolls have been identified. For the most part, the finds were a mass of scattered, sometimes tiny fragments, the number of which reached about 25,000. Through long and painstaking work, a number of scraps were identified by content and combined into more or less integral texts.
As the analysis shows, the overwhelming majority of the texts are composed in Aramaic and Hebrew, and only a small part - in Greek. Among the monuments were found scriptures of biblical, apocryphal and private religious content.
In general, the Dead Sea manuscripts cover almost all the Books of the Old Testament, with rare exceptions. It is interesting to note that, for example, the Book of the Prophet Isaiah was preserved almost in full, and a comparison of the ancient text of this Book with up-to-date lists indicates their mutual correspondence.
According to one theory, the Qumran manuscripts originally belonged to the Essene community that lived in that area, known from ancient sources. It was an isolated sect that practiced keeping the law and strict (Old Testament). In favor of the above assumption, among other things, the conclusions from the study and a kind of scientific interpretation of the ancient ruins found there are inclined. It is believed that the Essenes could have lived in the area until it was captured by Roman soldiers in 68.
Meanwhile, there is another point of view, according to which at least some of the documents found are not of sectarian, but of Jewish origin.
Nikolay Borichevsky
One of the most important questions of all generations is the question of the inerrancy and truth of the Bible. Is the Bible "legislation" and "guidance" from God for the inhabitants of planet Earth, or is it just a collection of historical and religious documents written mostly by little-known authors? Are the facts stated in the Bible a personal and private view of the author on the history of his people, or the totality of all sixty-six books of the Bible represent the true and infallible legislation of the Creator?
If the Bible really is the Word of God, then by using God's own claims about the accuracy and inerrancy of the Scriptures, critics need to find only a few mistakes to discredit the entire Bible. For example, God in Scripture said the following: "Every word of God is pure; He is a shield to those who trust in Him" (Prov. 30: 5) or "God is not a man to lie to Him, and not a son of man to change Him" (Num. 23 :nineteen). Pointing to a high standard of accuracy, can the books of Scripture stand the test of time that has been going on for several millennia?
The Bible, or Scripture, was created over 15 centuries by more than forty authors in a wide variety of public offices. But not only were they the authors of the books of the Old Testament - also the special influence of the Holy Spirit guaranteed the infallibility of their work. This influence of God on the work of an individual person is called divine inspiration (Greek theopneustos), and it is expressed in the special guidance of God, but at the same time the individual features of the author's letter are preserved, including stylistic features his language, a worldview corresponding to his era, etc. It should be clarified that the divinely inspired, infallible text of the Scriptures is the original books, or autographs. An additional difficulty in certifying the accuracy of Bible translations was the fact that autographs did not reach us, but only numerous copies and translations. Most of them appeared much later than the written originals. The question arises of correspondence and error-free translations, preserving the style and structure of writing. Moreover, a number of religious and anti-religious movements based their dogma on this assumption, arguing that the accuracy of the Bible is lost and only they have a true knowledge of the meaning of Holy Scripture. These include Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, and others. Scientists-atheists, in turn, claim that the Bible that exists today and the one that was two thousand years ago are very different from each other and are, in fact, different books. They claim that the Bible texts have been rewritten many times depending on the political situation, which has often changed over the millennia. A number of scholarly researchers questioned the dates of the writing of the books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, and also disputed the authorship of these prophets in favor of their followers, who allegedly wrote these books several centuries after their lives.
Also, the Hebrew language, in which most of the books were written, had its own structural features, which made it difficult to create error-free translations. For example, the Hebrew alphabet had no vowels, only consonants were written, and, moreover, in a continuous order, almost without division into words. The pronunciation of words was transmitted in verbally... The tradition of correct pronunciation of texts was reliable and stable, but, nevertheless, it left room for individual errors.
An exceptional dedication to the preservation and transmission of the accuracy of Scripture was distinguished by scholars who in the following centuries came to be called Masoretes. They copied the text with the greatest care and, over time, even began to number the verses, words, letters of each book. Their greatest merit was the introduction into the text of "vowels" - signs denoting vowel sounds that followed consonants, which made it easier to read. (Samuel J. Schultz. "The Old Testament Says ...". Spiritual Revival, Moscow, 1997, p. 13.)
To respond to skeptics and critics of the Scriptures, and to study and deepen the knowledge of the meaning difficult places ancient books, textual critics and exegetes needed new confirmation of the truth of the Bible. They subjected the books of the Bible to textual criticism in order to restore as accurately as possible the original meaning of the text.
In 1947, an event occurred that opened a new era in the history and science of biblical research. A fifteen-year-old Bedouin shepherd named Muhammad Ed-Deeb, tending a flock of sheep in the Judean Desert, near the shores of the Dead Sea, thirty-six kilometers east of the city of Jerusalem. In search of the lost sheep, he drew attention to one of the many caves in the steep slopes of limestone cliffs. Throwing a stone at one of them and hearing the sound of a beating vessel, he came to the conclusion that he had found a treasure. Together with his partner, he climbed into this cave and discovered several clay vessels, inside which were scrolls of old leather. At first, the shepherds wanted to use the leather for their own purposes, but it was very shabby. Then they noticed that unfamiliar letters were visible on them. Soon the scrolls fell into the hands of archaeological scientists. So the manuscripts of the Qumran caves, which became famous all over the world, were found, from which they got their name - Qumran manuscripts. They are also called the Dead Sea manuscripts, because of the close proximity of the sea to the place of discovery.
After a short time, the search for new scrolls was resumed and the archaeological world accepted the most ancient texts and writings into its treasuries for research. Over the course of several years, from 1952 to 1956, archaeologists recovered from 11 caves in Qumran more than 10 well-preserved scrolls, as well as about 25,000 fragmentary fragments, some of which are the size of a postage stamp. From these scraps and pieces, through complex analysis and comparison, it was possible to isolate about 900 fragments of ancient texts.
The discovered manuscripts were of the following categories: about 25% of all manuscripts were Old Testament books or their fragments, and the rest were divided into: 1) biblical commentaries; 2) the apocrypha of the Old Testament; 3) teaching literature of non-biblical content; 4) statutory documents of an unknown community; 5) letters. Most of the scrolls were written in Hebrew and Aramaic, and very few in Ancient Greek. It is also important to note that parts or fragments of all the books of the Old Testament were found from among the Old Testament manuscripts, with the exception of the book of Esther.
The uniqueness of the found scrolls lies primarily in their antiquity. Various methods for determining the date of writing have indicated the age of the manuscripts between 250 BC. and by the third quarter of the 1st century AD, when the first Jewish uprising began (66-73 AD). It is no exaggeration to say that this archaeological event divided biblical textology into two periods - before the Qumran manuscripts and after.
Very often the Bible, as a history book, has been questioned, including historical dates and names. These objections were not easy to resist, as the earliest surviving Bible manuscripts before the Qumran Scrolls date from no earlier than about A.D. 900, namely the British Museum manuscript (A.D. 895) , two manuscripts from the library of the city of St. Petersburg (916 and 1008 A.D.) and a manuscript from Aleppo (Code of Aaron Ben-Asher) - 10th century A.D. All other manuscripts date from the XII-XV centuries A.D. .X. Thus, the biblical manuscripts found in Qumran turned out to be older than those that were known to scientists before, more than a thousand years! The discovery of the Dead Sea manuscripts was the most important and significant event of the twentieth century for biblical studies. Ancient scrolls have confirmed that the Bible is historically accurate.
Scientists have put forward several hypotheses as to how such a large accumulation of scrolls was collected in one place and to whom they belonged. One of the options says that the settlers of Qumran were members of one of the communities of the Essenes - a religious movement in Palestine between the 3rd century before the birth of Christ and the 1st after his birth. Others argue that all these scrolls did not belong to the Essenes, but to the Temple of Jerusalem, from where they were taken for preservation before being destroyed in A.D. 70. In support of this theory, its proponents argue that it is unlikely that a small community could own such a large number of scrolls of such diverse themes.
Another version that Qumran was a "monastic printing house" is also extremely doubtful, since only a few inkpots were found there, and for copying such huge amount manuscripts must have hundreds of scribes.
Therefore, it was not possible to do such a thing in Qumran, at the location of the hiding places.
The found materials of the pre-Christian period made it possible to make an exegetical analysis of the Old Testament and New Testament books, studying the beliefs of the Jews who lived on the eve of the birth of Christ. One of the highlights is the study of the messianic ideas and attitudes of the Jews of that time. The Qumran manuscripts confirm that messianic expectations were common ideas at the time of their writing, i.e. 200 years before the birth of Christ.
For the interpretation of the Old Testament, as well as the confirmation of the divinity of Jesus Christ, the term "Son of God" is very important, which indicates the divine nature of the Messiah. The psalm says: "The Lord said to Me: You are my Son, today I have begotten You" (Psalm 2: 7). This proves that Christ is the Son of God. Many critics and skeptics opposed this title of the Lord, claiming that Christianity introduced into Judaism the understanding of the Messiah as the Son of God, alien to the Old Testament tradition, allegedly borrowed from Hellenism. Critics argued that at the time of Christ, the Roman emperors were officially proclaimed "gods", "sons of God", therefore, conferring this title on Christ is the "self-will" of Greek Christians outside Palestine.
The Qumran manuscripts provided an answer to this anti-gospel claim. One of the scrolls found after its study was named "The Son of God". It is about a King who will come to conquer nations and rule with justice. Here is a quote from a scroll found in cave 4: “But Your Son will be great on earth and all nations will be reconciled to Him and will serve Him. For He will be called the Son of the Great God, and He will be called by His name. God, and they will call Him the Son of the Most High ... His kingdom will be an everlasting kingdom, and all His ways will be in righteousness. He will judge the earth according to righteousness, and all will be at peace "(4Q246 1: 7b-2: 1, 5-6).
This is compelling evidence that the expression "Son of God" was prevalent in messianic expectations even before the birth of Christ, who would establish an eternal kingdom of peace and justice. This text added to the testimony of the Gospel that the born Jesus "will be called the Son of the Most High" (Luke 1:32).
It is difficult to overestimate the significance of the found Dead Sea manuscripts for biblical studies and textual criticism. In particular, the textual analysis of the texts of Scripture found in Qumran suggests that in the III-I centuries BC. there were several types of Hebrew text. On the basis of one of them, a translation was made, which is the only translation of the Holy Scriptures into Greek and which is well known to us under the name of the Septuagint. It was from this text that the Bible was translated into many languages, including Russian, which was translated into the 9th century by Cyril and Methodius.
Most importantly, this archaeological discovery has confirmed the authenticity and infallibility of the books of the Old Testament. When scientists examined the book of the prophet Isaiah, found in Qumran, and compared the text with the already available version, the text coincidence turned out to be incredibly high, as is commonly believed in textual criticism. The text from Qumran and the text of the currently used Standard Bible coincided by more than 95%! The remaining 5% were minor spelling errors. Importantly, there was no semantic discrepancy in both versions. This once again proves the thoroughness and accuracy of the work of the scribes of ancient manuscripts and gives us confidence in the truth and infallibility of the Holy Scriptures.
Without a doubt, the Qumran discovery proves that God saved His Word from mistakes and inaccuracies throughout the centuries, preserving It from disappearance, modification and involuntary errors. The ancient custodians of these manuscripts deliberately hid their invaluable archives, trusting God, about whom they wrote in their documents, not doubting that He would preserve the texts for future generations. And this time turned out to be our era almost 2000 years later!
50 years ago, the book "The Dead Sea Manuscripts" by Iosif Amusin became the bestseller of Soviet popular science literature. When the intelligentsia read this book, science knew less than a quarter of what we know about Qumran today. Recorded between the middle of the 3rd century BC. e. and the middle of the 1st century A.D. e. on thousands of parchment scraps, the texts make up the library of the Jewish sect that influenced the formation of Christianity.
In early February 1947, fifteen-year-old Bedouin Muhammad ad-Din, nicknamed the Wolf from the Taamire tribe, grazing goats in the desert area of Wadi Qumran (two kilometers west of the Dead Sea, 13 kilometers south of Jericho and 25 kilometers east of Jerusalem) and accidentally found seven parchment scrolls in a cave … This is how all stories about the Qumran epic begin without exception. The version sounds romantic, but simplifies reality somewhat: the manuscripts of the Qumran community have been stumbled upon before. In the 3rd century, the great Christian theologian Origen found them in the vicinity of Jericho in an earthen vessel. Around 800, a dog led an Arab hunter to one of the Qumran caves, from where he took out some scrolls and handed them over to the Jews of Jerusalem. Finally, at the end of the 19th century, a Qumran document was discovered in an ancient Cairo synagogue. But these findings did not make the difference in science. Qumran entered the forefront of history at the same time as the entire Middle East appeared there - in the middle of the twentieth century.
"Indiana Jones"
In April 1947, the Bedouin Wolf offered the find to the Bethlehem antiquarian Ibrahim Ijhe, who showed no interest in it. Another trader, Kando, agreed to look for a buyer for a third of the future profits. The scrolls were offered to the monastery of St. Mark - and again unsuccessfully. Only in July, the Metropolitan of Syria Orthodox Church in Jerusalem, Samuel agreed to buy four manuscripts for £ 24 ($ 250). A month later, an Egyptian merchant brought another manuscript to the US intelligence agent in Damascus, Miles Copeland. He agreed to photograph him and find out if anyone would be interested in this rarity. They decided to shoot on the roof to make it lighter - a strong gust of wind blew the scroll into dust. In November, three scrolls were bought by archeology professor Eliezer Sukenik of the Hebrew University. In February 1948, the scrolls purchased by Christians were taken to the American School of Oriental Studies in Jerusalem. Their antiquity was recognized there. Following the Americans, Sukenik made a similar statement, before that he did not want to make a fuss so as not to raise the price. But the Arab-Israeli war that began in May interrupted all contacts between sellers and buyers, and scientists with each other. The Sukenik lost his son on it and for a while forgot about the scrolls.
The manuscripts that were bought by the Syrian Christians were transported by Metropolitan Samuel to New York, where he went to raise funds for the needs of the Palestinian refugees. The scrolls were on display at the Library of Congress. In 1950, a public debate took place in Philadelphia, in which supporters of the authenticity of the scrolls won a decisive victory over those who believed they were forgeries. Meanwhile, Jordan outlawed Samuel as a thief, and he decided to sell the scrolls. For $ 250,000, they were bought for Israel by the second son of Professor Sukenik, the hero of the Arab-Israeli war, Iggael Yadin, for whom this was the fulfillment of his father's dying will. Of course, he acted through dummies: the Metropolitan would not sell to an Israeli for anything!
As a result of the war, the territory of Qumran went to Jordan, and all research there was carried out by French archaeologists-Catholics, who sought to find the most ancient roots of Christianity in Palestine. In November 1951, the Taamire Bedouins brought the found scroll to the director of the Rockefeller Museum in East Jerusalem, Joseph Saad. When they refused to disclose the place where the find was made, the director, without hesitation, took one of them hostage and thus learned about the new cave of the scrolls. But he was still ahead of the priest Roland de Vaux, who was already on the spot. In 1952, five caves were discovered and 15,000 fragments from 574 manuscripts were found collected at the French School of Bible and Archeology in East Jerusalem. In the same year, after the end of the archaeological season, the Bedouins found another cave near the excavation site - from there they sold thousands of scraps of 575 manuscripts. All this moved to the Rockefeller Museum. In the spring of 1955, four more scroll caves were discovered.
In January 1956, the era of new caves ended: only about 40 of them were discovered near the Dead Sea, but the manuscripts were found only at 11. In the "team competition" between scientists and Bedouins, the first won with a score of 6: 5. The number of finds reached 25,000. but of these there were only ten whole scrolls, and the rest were scraps, many of which do not exceed the size of a postage stamp. Some of the scrolls were torn apart by the Bedouins, who earned a Jordanian pound for every square centimeter.
Copper scroll
Undoubtedly, Qumran's most sensational find was not pieces of parchment, but two large scrolls of pure, albeit highly oxidized, copper. They were excavated in 1953 at the entrance to the Third Cave. Some Hebrew text was engraved on the inner surface of the metal, but it was impossible to read it: it turned out to be impossible to unfold the scrolls without breaking them. Then the scientists obtained permission to take them to Manchester, where they carefully sawed them into strips and finally read them. And here the scientists were waiting for a real sensation: the scroll (it was a single object 2.4 meters long, about 39 centimeters wide, broken in half) contained indications of specific 60 places in Palestine, where giant treasures are buried total amount from 138 to 200 tons of precious metals!
For example: “In the fortress, which is in the valley of Achor, forty cubits under the steps leading to the east, a chest with money and its contents: seventeen talents weighing” (No. 1); “Sixty cubits from the Solomon's Ditch in the direction of the great watchtower, buried three cubits: 13 talents of silver” (No. 24); "Under Absalom's tombstone, on the west side, twelve cubits are buried: 80 talents" (No. 49). The first thought was: where did the poor Qumranite community get such wealth? The answer was found quickly: it was the priests of the Jerusalem temple who packed the temple treasures into hiding places on the eve of the Roman siege of 70, and the key to the treasures was hidden in a cave. In 1959, hastily, until the treasure hunters found out about the secret, archaeologists organized an expedition, guided by the instructions of the Copper Scroll ... In vain! Everything turned out to be a hoax. But who would want to engrave such lies on expensive metal? Apparently, the text is allegorical in nature and it is about mystical, and not about real riches. Be that as it may, during the 1967 war, the Copper Scroll became the only Qumran item to be evacuated to Amman as a strategic facility.
Shortening Goliath
Radiocarbon dating has shown that the Qumran parchments date back to between 250 BC. e. and 70 A.D. e. They are exactly one thousand years older than all (with the exception of one) physically preserved Bible manuscripts. For example, a fragment of the list of the Book of the Prophet Daniel is only 50 years away from the moment when, according to the assumptions of scientists, this book itself was written! From the scraps obtained, it was possible, through complex analysis and comparison, to isolate about 900 fragments of ancient texts, mainly in Hebrew and Aramaic, only a few in Greek. The fourth part of the finds were excerpts from the biblical canon - all the terms of the Old Testament, with the exception of the Book of Esther. Finding copies so close to the time the originals were written makes it necessary to reconsider in some ways the traditional textual analysis of the Bible. For example, Goliath's height of "six cubits with a span" (more than three meters) should be corrected for "four cubits with a span", that is, the fairy-tale giant has turned into just a two-meter basketball player.
In addition to the biblical texts and commentaries to them, there were also apocryphal texts, that is, adjacent in content to the canonical, but not included in the canon by different reasons... For example, the Book of Giants in the 3rd century AD. e. became the sacred text of Manichaeism - a religion that almost won in the competition with Christianity. And also the Book of Jubilees, the Apocrypha of the Book of Genesis, the Book of Enoch. Still, the most interesting was the third section of the "library" - the own texts of the Qumran community: statutes, liturgical instructions, horoscopes. The names alone can turn your head: The Book of Lights, Hymns of the Poor, The Book of the Guardians, the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, The Astronomical Book of Enoch, The Charter of War, Songs of the Enlightener, Instructions to the sons of the dawn, Curses to Satan, Hymn of Ablution, Book of Secrets, Songs of the Sabbath Burnt Offering, Servants of Darkness, Children of salvation and, most intriguingly, the Tricks of a dissolute woman.
For a long time it was unclear who the inhabitants of Qumran were. The first hypothesis (which was ultimately confirmed) was that the Qumran library belonged to the Essenes sect. A lot is known about her from written sources: dissatisfied with the fact that official Judaism is adapting to the Hellenistic fashion, the sectarians retired to the caves to literally fulfill the prescriptions of the Bible. Their customs were so strange that Flavius Josephus, trying to give an idea of them to the Greek reader, said that they "practice the lifestyle that Pythagoras demonstrated among the Greeks." Not far from the caves, archaeologists have discovered the remains of a settlement. The coins found there date from the same period as the scrolls. Discovered water tanks, meeting rooms and even ... two inkwells. But the problem is that hundreds of different handwritings can be traced in the scrolls found, and in general it is not clear how a huge scriptorium could exist in a small settlement? Therefore, the scrolls were brought from somewhere else, maybe there was not even a library in the caves, but just a hiding place? But, then, the totality of the texts found there does not necessarily reflect the sectarian views of the Essenes? The mystery of Qumran lies in the fact that, unlike several other places nearby, where scrolls were also found, there are no non-religious texts here: the Qumranites did not leave us a single economic inventory or private letter, not a single IOU or a court verdict, and these are just such documents usually show the life of the community. That is why various hypotheses appear up to the present time. For example, in 1998, one researcher suggested that Qumran was not the capital of the Essenes, but a temporary refuge for splinter extremists. In 2004, several archaeologists hypothesized that the settlement in Qumran was generally a pottery factory, and refugees from Jerusalem destroyed by the Romans left the scrolls in the caves. Another mystery of the Qumran caves: not a single human bone has been found there. But most of the caves discovered in the Judean Desert served as the last refuge for refugees seeking salvation from the Macedonian and later Roman terror. One even received the name of the Cave of Horrors - 200 skeletons were found in it.
Bargaining is inappropriate
In 1960, General Iggael Yadin, the son of Professor Sukenik, retired and took up archeology. One day he received a letter from the USA from an anonymous author who volunteered to mediate the sale of a scroll of incredible value. For 10,000 dollars, the intermediary sent Yadin a fragment torn from the manuscript, but then the connection was interrupted. As soon as the volleys of the "Six-Day War" died down, Yadin, using his army connections, organized a raid in Bethlehem: he rightly reasoned that only the antique dealer Kando, with whom the Qumran epic began 20 years earlier, could act as an anonymous seller. Indeed, in the basement of his house, in a shoe box, lay a large, almost complete scroll (the fragment received by mail immediately fell into place in it), which was named the Temple. The antiquary was paid $ 105,000 but was not allowed to bargain.
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One of the inaccessible caves of Qumran, especially rich in finds. Photo: REMI BENALI / CORBIS / FSA |
"The Da Vinci Code"
In fact, no matter how curious the Qumran manuscripts are, no matter how valuable they are for science, interest in them would not have lasted at the initial level for half a century, if historians had not seen in them a possible clue to the emergence of Christianity. In 1956, one of the main researchers of the scrolls, the Englishman John Allegro, announced in a speech on the BBC his own theory that the Qumran community worshiped the crucified Messiah, that is, that Christians are simply plagiarists. Other scholars published an indignant rebuttal in The Times, but the genie of public excitement had already been released from the bottle. Subsequently, Allegro became an “enfantherable” of Qumran studies: in 1966 he published The Untold Story of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the venerable Harpers magazine, where he argued that churchmen maliciously conceal the unpleasant truth about Christ. Allegro was no longer taken seriously after the scandalous monograph The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross (1970) that all religions, including Christianity, developed from the cult of hallucinogenic mushrooms. (Sergei Kuryokhin's memorable discovery in 1991, that the mushroom was V.I.Lenin, cannot be considered completely original.) So no one was surprised by Allegro's book "The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Christian Myth" (1979), where he insisted that Jesus was a fictional character copied from the Qumran Master of Righteousness. " Allegro, of course, exaggerated the degree of politicization and clericalization of Qumran studies, but there is no smoke without fire. Indeed, the texts were published extremely slowly, no one wanted to share with others, people who had access to the scrolls did not allow their competitors to access them, the impression was created that someone was hiding something or deliberately distorting something in translation. And the place where the conflict of scientists was unfolding did not dispose to calmness. In 1966, Allegro persuaded the Jordanian government to nationalize the Rockefeller Museum, but his triumph was short-lived: the "Six Day War" that broke out soon brought East Jerusalem under Jewish control. The Temple Scroll fell into the hands of Israeli explorers.
However, in order not to aggravate the situation, the Israelis left the collection of the Rockefeller Museum in the hands of Catholic researchers - Roland de Vaux and Joseph Milik. They did not allow Jews to see the scrolls before, and now they have completely refused to cooperate with the invaders. In 1990, the head of the Catholic publishing project, John Strugnell, gave an interview to an Israeli newspaper in which he called Judaism "an abhorrent religion" and expressed regret that Jews had survived at all. After that, however, he lost his post.
By 1991, barely a fifth of the found texts had been published! In the same year, the sensational book "The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception" was published, the authors of which, Michael Baigent and Richard Lee, insisted that there was a Catholic conspiracy to hide the shameful secrets of Christianity. As always, conspiracy theory underestimated smaller but equally important factors, such as personal ambition. Be that as it may, the situation became unbearable, and finally the new project management announced a policy of complete openness of all texts for everyone (which was facilitated by the proliferation of personal computers). This made it easier to work with the old texts: in 1993, photographs of all surviving fragments were published. But the situation with the new ones only worsened: back in 1979, Israel ruled that every ancient find is a state property. This immediately made it impossible to legally acquire the scrolls from the treasure hunters. In 2005, Professor Canaan Eshel was arrested for buying scroll fragments on the black market, but later released without charge. The scraps were confiscated by the Israel Antiquities Authority, and then it turned out that they died during testing when officials tried to prove they were falsified. The problem of legalizing finds remains extremely acute for Qumran studies. But there are also reasons for optimism. For example, the emergence of new methods such as DNA analysis will make it easier to lay out a jigsaw puzzle of thousands of pieces: first, it will become clear which ones are written on parchment made from the skin of the same animal. Secondly, it will be possible to establish the hierarchical significance of different scrolls: after all, a cow or domestic goat were considered more "ritually pure" animals than a gazelle or a wild goat. And, finally, 38 volumes of the academic series “Texts of the Judean Desert” have already been published, and another volume is in the works. New discoveries may await us.
Tema non grata
Soviet scientists, for obvious reasons, could not participate in the search and deciphering of the scrolls, but their colleagues kept them informed. Already in 1956 in the "Bulletin ancient history»Information about Qumran was published by the wonderful St. Petersburg Hebraist Claudia Starkova. But the real intellectual sensation was created by the book of Iosif Amusin "The Dead Sea Manuscripts" (1960), which set out the detective story of the finds. Its entire circulation was immediately sold out, and immediately the second plant was released in the same circulation. That was the height of the "thaw", and all the same, the appearance of such a book during the period of Khrushchev's attack on religion looks like a complete miracle. After all, Amusin somehow managed to mention Jesus in it as a real person. However, the documentary publication “The Texts of Qumran” prepared by Starkova was stopped by the censors because of the “six-day war” and the “struggle against Zionism” that had begun. The book appeared only 30 years later.
Gemini rivals
In addition to scandals and rivalries, the very essence of the Qumran texts literally provoked scientists to hasty conclusions. The scrolls spoke of a certain Master of Righteousness who died at the hands of former followers. Mentioned in these texts and the Man of Lies, who betrayed the Teacher. In addition to the obvious identifications with Jesus and Judas, scientists have proposed the most amazing identifications. For example, in 1986 the American biblical scholar Robert Eisenman announced that the Teacher of Righteousness is the New Testament James, the brother of the Lord, and the Man of Lies is the Apostle Paul. In 1992, Australian theologian Barbara Tearing published Jesus and the Mystery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, in which she argued that the Teacher of Righteousness was John the Baptist and the Man of Lies was Jesus. True, the publication of the complete corpus of Qumran texts finally convinced everyone that the community arose long before Christianity, around 197 BC. e., and that the Master lived about 30 years later.
All the circumstances of the creation of the sect and the internal struggle in it are presented in scrolls in an extremely vague and allegorical form, much lends itself to reconstruction with the greatest difficulty. However, now we can be sure that the teachings of the Qumranites were very far from the postulates of early Christianity, just there are always typological similarities between the sects. For example, the supernatural endurance of the Essenes is very reminiscent of the early Christian martyrs. According to Josephus, the Romans of the Essenes “screwed and stretched, their limbs were burned and crushed; over them all the instruments of torture were tried to force them to blaspheme the legislator or to eat forbidden food, but nothing could be persuaded them to either one or the other. They steadfastly withstood the torment, not uttering a single sound or shedding a single tear. Smiling under the torture, laughing at those who tortured them, they cheerfully gave their souls in full confidence that they would receive them again in the future. " But such exaltation is characteristic of the followers of many other sects in different eras, and here they both relied on the same Old Testament and acted in the same locality. It is clear why the "Christian" interpretation literally climbed into the language of researchers. For example, one badly damaged place was decoded by the first publisher using infrared transmission as "When God gives birth to an anointed one." But then about a dozen other readings were suggested, and in the end the passage was declared unreadable.
 Fragment of the Aramaic text of the Apocryphal Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs. Photo: EYEDEA / EAST NEWS |
Nevertheless, the Qumran texts help to understand a lot in early Christianity, restoring the atmosphere of tense expectation of the Messiah that reigned in Judea in the era of crisis. For example, in Old Testament Melchizedek is mentioned only twice, in a very vague context, and therefore the popularity of this image in the New Testament literature looked completely inexplicable, especially the fact that Christ is likened to it. Now it became clear: in the Qumran document, Melchizedek is the celestial, the head of the host of angels, the patron saint of the "sons of light", the eschatological judge and herald of salvation. If in the Gospel Jesus fiercely argues with the main two currents of Judaism - Pharisaism and Sadducery - then the third most important trend, Essenism, is not mentioned even once. Can we conclude from this that Jesus did not know about him? This is unlikely. Some expressions like “Holy Spirit”, “Son of God”, “sons of light”, “poor in spirit” are clearly borrowed by Christians from Qumranites. The phrase "New Testament" was also introduced by them. By the way, the Temple Scroll, apparently, was written by the Teacher of Righteousness and declared by him a part of the Torah, its divinely inspired addition. A striking similarity is observed between the Essenes' communal meal of bread and wine and the Eucharist. And the most paradoxical call of Jesus - not to resist evil - finds a parallel in the statute of the Essenes: "I will not repay anyone with evil, but I persecute my husband with good." And what is there to be surprised at if John the Baptist “was in the deserts until the day of his appearance to Israel” and “preaches in the wilderness of Judah”, and Jesus “was there in the wilderness for forty days, tempted by Satan, and was with the beasts”, and later again "went to the country near the desert", and in general the desert was (and always remains!) - a stone's throw from the blossoming gardens of Judea. When John the Baptist sent to Jesus to ask, “Are you the one to Whom should come, or else to wait for us?” He said: “Go tell John what you have seen and heard - the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised and the poor hear the good news. " These words are a montage of many Old Testament quotations. And only one motive is absent in the Bible - there is no mention of the resurrection of the dead. But this is a direct quote from the Qumran work "On the Resurrection". There is a solid assumption that the Essenes inhabited an entire neighborhood in the southwestern part of Jerusalem, and it was there that Jesus stayed, and the Last Supper took place there. There are motives in the Gospel that, in the light of the Qumran scrolls, look like a polemic with the Essenes. For example, Christ asks: "Who among you, having one sheep, if it falls into a pit on Saturday, will not take it and pull it out?" This can be a direct objection to the Essenes postulate: "And if an animal falls into a hole or ditch, let no one pick it up on Saturday."
However, the main difference is rooted in the very essence: the Essenes addressed only the Jews, the Christians turned to propaganda among the pagans; the Essenes considered the Master a prophet, but not God; The Essenes hoped for a real earthly victory over the "sons of darkness", as for Christians, their religion gained so many followers precisely because after the destruction in 70 AD. e. Emperor Titus of the Temple of Jerusalem, and it became impossible to dream of any real victory over the invincible Rome. There was only one weapon left - the word. Or the Word.
