Customer Reviews

Dead Sea Scrolls and the Christian Faith: In Celebration of the Jubilee Year of the Discovery of Qumran Cave I (Faith And Scholarship Colloquies)

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A short presentation of the content and importance of discoveries in Qumran! This short book composed of 4 small essays written by Biblical scholars gives us a brief explanation of the importance of the Dead Sea scrolls discovered in Qumran both in our understanding of Christian and Jewish origins. These documents remain as the only and greatest evidence of 1st century's Palestinian Judaism and give us a better understanding of the birth of Christianity. The Christian ideas about a "Son of God", a mass of bread and wine, a final Apocalypse and some literary similarities in the interpretation of Old Testament prophecies are proof of a relation (although complicated) between Christians and Essenes. Also, the authors explain how the content of the scrolls leave rational Christian faith unaffected and that the sensational documents about "a dying Messiah" or "Mark's little apocalypse" may have been ill-interpreted by their translators. Still, I would have liked to read a more extensive explanation of these matters, because I believe that there still remains more to be said. For instance, James Charlesworth was quite brief in dismissing Allegro's ideas about Christian origins and I would like to have read a better discussion of this subject. This reading defied several of my thoughts and beliefs about the nature of the discoveries at Qumran and gave me a better view of their content and importance.

Carlos Madeira, 21st of August of 99