11. The scrolls and early Christianity

2017 ◽  
pp. 113-122
Author(s):  
Timothy H. Lim
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
Dead Sea Scrolls ◽  
Dead Sea ◽  
Early Church ◽  
The Dead

‘The scrolls and early Christianity’ looks at what the Dead Sea Scrolls can tell us about Christianity. Any link between the Dead Sea Scrolls and the early Church generates a great deal of sensationalism. Some say that the scrolls are New Testament documents that depict Jesus. For instance, one fragment apparently tells of a ‘slain prince [or messiah]’. In fact, the prince was actually slaying someone else—oddities in vowel and suffix use in ancient Hebrew give rise to the misinterpretation. Another theory suggests that there was a common sectarian matrix in use at the birth of Christianity, meaning that one sect could use words very differently to another.

Early Christianity and the Dead Sea Scrolls

1994 ◽  
Vol 57 (1) ◽  
pp. 82-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. J. Geller
Keyword(s):  
Early Christianity ◽  
Dead Sea Scrolls ◽  
Dead Sea ◽  
Early Church ◽  
Legal Practice ◽  
Marriage Contracts ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Legal Innovation ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Sectarian Group

One of the fundamental innovations of the early Church was the abolition of an ancient, venerable institution—divorce, the practice of which was as widespread as marriage itself. The explicit ban on divorce found in the Gospels ran counter to legal systems of the known world, with one notable exception: among the sectarian group whose rules are enshrined in the Dead Sea Scrolls, a stance against divorce can be verified, implying that a legal innovation of early Christianity can be tracked back to its origins in Sectarian Judaism.By the time Christianity was emerging, marriage and divorce had already co-existed for a long time; in Mesopotamia marriage contracts had for two millennia been anticipating the possibility of divorce, with litigation governing the dissolution of marriage and division of properties. The best evidence, however, for the precursors to late Hellenistic (i.e. pagan, Jewish, and Christian) legal practice derives from a group of Neo-Babylonian marriage contracts dating from the seventh to third centuries B.C.

scholarly journals Die uitbouing van die Bybelse kanon in antieke Judaïsme en die vroeë Christendom

2015 ◽  
Vol 71 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jörg Frey
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
Dead Sea Scrolls ◽  
Dead Sea ◽  
Ancient Judaism ◽  
Canonical Process ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Dead

The development of the biblical canon in ancient Judaism and early Christianity. A brief account of the process of the development of both the Jewish and the bipartite Christian canon is given. It is argued that due to insights gained from recent textual discoveries, especially the Dead Sea Scrolls (Qumran texts), earlier theories about the history of canonisation had to be reviewed. With the New Testament canon the authors focus on the influence of Marcion as well as the various other factors that played a role in the process of canonisation. It is shown that canonisation was the result of a complicated and variegated canonical process. But in spite of the problems of the criteria used and other factors involved, the biblical canon is theologically valuable and ‘well-chosen’.

Jewish Law in the Gospels in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls

2021 ◽  
pp. 014610792110343
Author(s):  
Lawrence H. Schiffman
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Dead Sea Scrolls ◽  
Dead Sea ◽  
The Self ◽  
First Century ◽  
Jewish Law ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
The Dead ◽  
The Right

This study examines a number of specific examples of halakhic (Jewish legal) matters discussed in the New Testament that are also dealt with in the Dead Sea Scrolls. This paper compares and contrasts the rulings of these two traditions, as well as the Pharisaic views, showing that the Jewish legal views of the Gospels are for the most part lenient views to the left of those of the Pharisees, whereas those of the Dead Sea Scrolls represent a stricter view, to the right of the Pharisaic views. Ultimately, in the halakhic debate of the first century ce, the self-understanding of the earliest Christians was very different from that of the sect of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

scholarly journals The importance of the Dead Sea Scrolls for the study of the explicit quotations in Ad Hebraeos

2016 ◽  
Vol 72 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gert J. Steyn
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Dead Sea Scrolls ◽  
Critical Value ◽  
Dead Sea ◽  
Religious Background ◽  
New Testament Studies ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Book Of Hebrews

The important contribution that the Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS) hold for New Testament studies is probably most evident in Ad Hebraeos. This contribution seeks to present an overview of relevant extant DSS fragments available for an investigation of the Old Testament explicit quotations and motifs in the book of Hebrews. A large number of the explicit quotations in Hebrews were already alluded to, or even quoted, in some of the DSS. The DSS are of great importance for the study of the explicit quotations in Ad Hebraeos in at least four areas, namely in terms of its text-critical value, the hermeneutical methods employed in both the DSS and Hebrews, theological themes and motifs that surface in both works, and the socio-religious background in which these quotations are embedded. After these four areas are briefly explored, this contribution concludes, among others, that one can cautiously imagine a similar Jewish sectarian matrix from which certain Christian converts might have come – such as the author of Hebrews himself.

Traces of Gnosticism in the Dead Sea Scrolls?

1954 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 137-141
Author(s):  
Bo Reicke
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Dead Sea Scrolls ◽  
Dead Sea ◽  
Archaeological Evidence ◽  
The North ◽  
Hebrew Word ◽  
Western Shore ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Christian Century ◽  
North Western

The Hebrew scrolls newly discovered near Qumran at the north-western shore of the Dead Sea, which are attracting more and more the attention of New Testament students, are also very important for the evolution of Jewish Gnosticism. One may think especially of the fact that in some of these manuscripts the Hebrew word for ‘knowledge’ and related terms occur with a striking frequency, and that the dualistic cosmology of the new texts seems to be rather like certain fundamental ideas of Gnosticism. Since the archaeological evidence now proves that the Qumran manuscripts are pre-Christian, or were at least written in the first Christian century, one may very well state that new light can now be thrown upon the much debated question of a pre-Christian, Jewish Gnosticism.

The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Early Church

1963 ◽  
Vol 83 (1) ◽  
pp. 165
Author(s):  
J. B. P. ◽  
Lucetta Mowry
Keyword(s):  
Dead Sea Scrolls ◽  
Dead Sea ◽  
Early Church ◽  
The Dead
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