Previously in Why Should We Care About the Dead Sea Scrolls, we took a look at some of the reasons these documents are so important to our understanding of actual history.
From the Damascus Document, the War Scroll, the Habakkuk Pesher, the Rules of Discipline, and other archeological evidence we can, for the first time, see the real story. After a lifetime of study and research, one thing is clear: the official stories about the development of Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism are almost exclusively Roman propaganda. The true story can now be discerned from ancient documents the Romans never had the chance to destroy.
We should not lose sight of the fact that the caretakers of the Dead Sea Scrolls were, until the 1990s, under the control of Catholic scholars who were beholden to the Catholic Church.
What can the scrolls tell us about the group the Roman Empire (and its successor, the Roman Catholic Church) so masterfully kept hid from us for two thousand years?
About two-thirds of the Dead Sea Scrolls consist of biblical documents. As has often been repeated, those documents are quite similar to the texts of the Hebrew scriptures that were transmitted over the centuries. For many religious folks, that is where the story ends. But that is actually only the beginning. If you are curious as to what kinds of differences have been found, you may want to check out this video from James Tabor’s blog.
Almost a third of the documents are sectarian, written by a very anti-establishment group with chapters (or what they called “camps”) all over the place. Prior to their discovery we only knew of the people who composed these documents from small references written by Roman officials who had no use for them.
An exception would be the writings of the man who called himself Flavious Josephus. He was a contemporary of the patriots at Qumran and claimed to have spent some time with them. That was a problem for him because at the time of his writing, he had betrayed them and everything they stood for. He was sucking from the tete of the Roman emperor. He actually wrote his works from Vespasian’s place in Rome.
Because he was already identified with this group, Josephus appears to have modified his description of the “Essenes” into two categories: one almost nauseatingly peaceful, and the other a band of militant terrorists determined to overthrow Rome. These people, he tells us, were a “Fourth Philosophy” along with that of the Scribes, Pharisees, and Sadducees. This left room for him to be counted among the Roman friendly section of the group.
Josephus tells us this so-called Fourth Philosophy was founded by a person known as Judah the Galilean. According to his account, this group in “the Wilderness” were wreaking havoc on the stability of Roman rule in the region:
. . . the nation was infected with this doctrine to an incredible degree; one violent war came upon us after another, and we lost our friends who used to alleviate our pain; there were also very great robberies and murders of our principle men.
It should be no surprise that the Romans who totally controlled everything that was published, retained Josephus (and as we will later see, the New Testament writers) to write the official Roman version of events for posterity. But for the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Roman versions of these stories would be all we have.
In the coming months, be on the lookout for my new book. Based on historical evidence, this will be a fictional account of the very historical leader of the last Messianic movement to reclaim Jerusalem and the land of Zion.
For an in-depth inquiry into what these labels may mean, check my most recent book, Revelation and the AntiChrist. It explores how many of the New Testament mysteries can be explained without resorting to the magical thinking of most commentaries.
For a deep dive into the actual history of Jesus and his followers, check out The Second Crucifixion of Jesus.
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