Written on Monday, October 29, 2007 by Jeph Porter
Dead Sea Scrolls - some interesting parallels

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Tiny Frog has this little tidbit up about the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Qumran people that predated the Christians. Of course this is a skeptical, non-believer point of view on the topic so this is what he has to say:

For unbeliever, Christianity borrowed many religious practices from this group, and that fact had almost disappeared from history. I suppose the believer might argue that the Qumran group had some pre-revelation from God. Although, that doesn’t really explain the different uses of Baptism, why the contents of the “Blessed be” text would be different, and why they (as a group) didn’t accept Jesus despite this “pre-Revelation”. A second explanation for the believer might be that the parallels are coincidence, but that doesn’t seem very likely.
Interesting thought.

2 Responses to "Dead Sea Scrolls - some interesting parallels"

kevin schwartz says
November 2, 2007 at 12:31 PM

There are many parallels between the Qumran community and early Christianity. This is mostly due to the fact that they held sacred a common set of Scriptures (what we think of as the Old Testament).

This leads to many commonalities that are due to interpreting and reading the same text. However, it is often lost that the Qumran community was a small Jewish sect that thought they were the true people of God.

So, of course there are commonalities with Christianity since both sects (since that is how Christianity began) were based on the same Scriptures. The discoveries at Qumran also help to possible develop a greater understanding of Judaic thought at the time. Though, it must be remembered that they were a sect that was a small community and did not have a large following. But, there is no basis for seeing the Qumran community as a pre-revealed or pre-Christian sect that led directly to Christianity.

Jeph Porter says
November 4, 2007 at 1:29 PM

I agree, I don't think they are directly related to Christians. However, I do see it as an interesting model for early Christianity, and how a lot of the pomp and vigor that modern Christians put on the "special" aspect of their religion is rendered mute as the Qumran people show them to be just another sect of dissenting Jews.

And interesting how having grown up Christian, you never hear about that. In fact, the only knowledge of the dead sea scrolls I remember, had nothing to do with the Qumran, but how the scrolls somehow proved the validity of Christianity.

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