The Meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls: Their Significance For Understanding the Bible, Judaism, Jesus, and Christianity

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The story of the discovery of the first Dead Sea Scrolls has become a part of Western lore. Who has not heard about the Bedouin shepherd who threw a rock into a cave, heard a crash, went in to explore, and found the scrolls? The story in that form may be accurate, but it turns out to be something of a simplification. As a matter of fact, much remains unknown about the exact circumstances under which those scrolls were discovered. The story of the discovery at first deals with just one cave; the other ten were located at later times.

In the first part, Vanderkam and Flint give an overview of the discovery and identification of the scrolls. This includes discussion of the acquisitions and explorations, the dating processes, and the archaeological digs around the site at Qumran. The authors also discuss the use of technology in the processes around the Dead Sea Scrolls; processes such as Carbon-14 dating were in their infancy during the time the scrolls were first discovered - both technology and scroll knowledge have come a long way in the past 55 years.

The second section looks at the relationship of the scrolls to scripture. The chapters here look almost exclusively at the Hebrew Bible; questions regarding the New Testament are reserved for a later section. The scrolls contained at least some portions of every text of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament save (perhaps) Esther; there are also apocryphal and pseudipigraphical texts among the scrolls. This section shows some of the multi-task use of the book - in discussing the relationship of the scrolls to the canon of scripture, they go into some detail about what is meant by the use of the term 'canonical', and what constitutes the canon of scripture for the Jewish, Roman Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox bibles. This makes this an excellent text book for biblical studies classes in addition to a book for the general reader.

The third section surveys the nonbiblical scrolls - phylacteries, commentaries, community documents, and more. In addition to looking at these texts, the authors recreate from them a possible portrait of the community at Qumran, providing of course that one accepts that the scrolls are related to the Qumran site. The authors mention various interpretations at different points, but largely concentrate on the most commonly accepted interpretation, which is that the Qumran group was a part of the Essenes, one of the three primary groups of Judaism identified by Josephus as being present in the late Second Temple period. This section also addresses some of the more interesting characters found within the writing of the scrolls, the Teacher of Righteousness and the Wicked Priest.

The fourth section takes up the issue of relationships between the scrolls and the New Testament. The authors discount the various claims that New Testament fragments have been found among the scrolls, while not ruling out that such discoveries might in fact occur. However, the primary claims have largely been discounted. The connections between Essene thinking and practice and some early Christians, however, is stronger, but not to the extent that Jesus or John the Baptist can be identified as Essenes (or, as is also sometimes speculated, Zealots). The authors take issue with those whose sensational interpretations (Allegro, Thiering, et al.) rest on shaky extrapolations.

The final primary section gives a good account of the controversial history of the scrolls, looking at the governmental politics, the academic politics, the sensational and sometimes outlandish conspiracy theories about the restrictions placed on the scrolls and the content of 'hidden' scrolls, and the long court battle that resulted from the publication by Herschel Shanks and others of a famous 120-line text, 4QMMT, made far more remarkable for the problems of publication than it perhaps ever would be as a part of the larger body of scrolls.

Authors Vanderkam and Flint provide several appendices, including indexes, quotations and allusions, and a good listing of further readings, including translations of the scrolls in book, microfiche and electronic forms. The book has a very generous collection of photographs, charts, graphs, line-art drawings and maps. There are useful highlight boxes and technical detail boxes to focus upon particular important points. The general layout of the book is very nice, easy to read and visually interesting.

A great book!