Dead Sea Scrolls - some interesting parallels

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.

69th Skeptic Circle

Unscrewing the Inscrutable has it this time.

If you're unfamiliar with this, its a collection of some of the best essays on the internet. Skeptically minded that is.

Check it out.