My Re-Examination of Christianity's New Testament From My College Days

 Nadene Goldfoot                                           

Back in September 1951, I attended Lewis & Clark College, a Presbyterian one,  in Portland, Oregon, and took as a history requirement a class on the Old and New Testament, taught by an Oriental professor, so I thought it would be quite historic and non-proselytizing, and it was, but I was just 17 when I had started, and my eyes see a lot more today, though I'm  88 now.  Time to re-examine my old college bible.                                  

My class was full of returnees from the Korean war (1950-1953)-pulled out of high school's senior year to go to war.  They spoke out, asked questions, were a little older.  I was just a shy quiet student.

                   The first thing I notice is the title of my text:  The Complete Bible, translated by JM Powis Smith and a group of scholars-the Apocrypha and the New testament translated by Edgar J. Goodspeed, by the U of Chicago Press.  It covers all the writings of the Old Testament-Pentateuch, historical books, poetical books, books of the prophets,  the apocrypha, and 233 pages of the New Testament at the end. There are no comments in it.  Copyright was in 1939.  "The Bible was mass produced after the invention of the printing press in 1450. Johannes Gutenberg mass produced over 100 copies of the Bible for the first time in 1452."                                                

It's noteworthy that I explain the Jewish Messiah first: Messiah is an adjective referring to kings.  Kings are anointed.   He is the anointed one, the ultimate deliverer.  The anointment allows the king to receive Divine sanctions and a unique inviolability of station. He is also a man;  nothing else.   

High Priests were also anointed and in exiled times, it implied anyone with a special mission from G-d like the patriarchs, prophets, the Jewish people, even gentiles such as Cyrus the Mede.  

Among the many uses of olive oil in ancient times was its use as an anointing oil. In fact, olive oil continues to be prominently used in religious ceremonies in the Jewish and Christian churches to this very day. The Bible describes many of the types of uses of olive oil, specifically its temple uses in Exodus.

Why use olive oil for anointing? There were a variety of reasons.

First and foremost, olive oil had a tremendous symbolic value to the Hebrews. It could indicate honor and joy. If you poured oil on another person’s head, you were wishing them happiness. This is described in numerous Psalms, such as Psalm 23, 92, 45, and 104.

Olive oil was also a symbol of life. A person who recovered from leprosy had to place olive oil on his or her right ear, right thumb, and right big toe after placing blood on each of those places. The oil would then be poured over the leper’s head as a sign of atonement before the Lord, a ceremony that is described in full in Leviticus 14. Jewish tradition indicates to us that the oil was symbolic of the leper coming back from “the dead,” as leprosy was essentially a death sentence and forced people to live a life apart from the rest of society.                               

After the exile of Jews, the prophetic vision of the universal establishment of G-d's kingdom was associated with the ingathering of Israel under a scion of David's House, who would be the Lord's anointed.  

In the period of Roman rule the expectation of a personal Messiah acquired great prominence and he assumed the character of a descendant of David who would break the alien yoke and establish a golden age.  the messianic figure was the center of a large number of eschatological concepts, and is reflected in the body of Hellenistic Jewish pseudepigraphic (falsely or wrongly attributed.) literature from the 1st century CE.  

From 66 to 70 CE, life was on the edge.  The First Jewish–Roman War ended with destruction of the Second Temple and the fall of Jerusalem. 1,100,000 people are killed by the Romans during the siege, and 97,000 captured and enslaved. The Sanhedrin was relocated to Yavne by Yochanan ben Zakai, see also Council of Jamnia. Fiscus Judaicus levied on all Jews of the Roman Empire whether they aided the revolt or not.

Messianic emotionalism became intense shortly before 70 CE.  It was a period of many false Messiahs appearing.  When the 2nd Temple and city of Jerusalem were destroyed in 70 CE, the belief grew even stronger.

                          Aluf (General) Bar Kokhba) d: 135  

Frequent predictions of when the Messiah would appear were based on the Book of Daniel and other biblical passages.  The widespread Jewish revolt of 115-117 certainly had a messianic content and during the last revolt against the Romans, Aluf Bar Kokhba was acclaimed the Messiah.  He had held Jerusalem from 132 to 135 when he was killed in battle.  

I see that Matthew, the first part, was a genealogist, as he cites how Jesus was a Jew and his ancestry as he knew of it. It has add-ons that are not found in the Jewish genealogy used to prove a connection to the line.   Matthew is a classic boy's name stemming from Hebrew origins, meaning “gift of God.” ” Bearing strong biblical ties, Matthew was one of the 12 apostles, and the author of the Gospel of Matthew. His parents may have been typical Jews, but he became hellenized.  

 He notes that from Abraham to David is 14 generations, and from David to the Babylonian Exile 14, and from the Babylonian Exile to the Christ, 14. Christianity teaches that  It is clear that the Messiah must come from the line of David, but nothing in the Jewish texts require him to be any particular generation.  A messiah in Judaism is completely different from  the Christian Messiah.  

    This is the first of using the name, Christ, as if all understand the meaning or use.  Also, this is the first to use Jesus.  Jesus is a Greek name.  Christ is, also.  Etymology. Christ comes from the Greek word χριστός (chrīstós), meaning "anointed one".  Matthew wrote:  the Christ---the annointed one.  

Jesus is Joshua in Hebrew.  Jesus (/ˈdʒiːzəs/) is a masculine given name derived from Iēsous (Ἰησοῦς; Iesus in Classical Latin) the Ancient Greek form of the Hebrew and Aramaic name Yeshua or Y'shua (Hebrew: ישוע). As its roots lie in the name Yeshua/Y'shua, it is etymologically related to another biblical name, Joshua.

In both Biblical and Modern Hebrew, Yod represents a palatal approximant ([j]). As a mater lectionis, it represents the vowel [i].  In other words, J is not used in Hebrew.  The words using J later on were originally using the letter yod (yud) or a yuh sound, which is a vowel (a,e,i,o,u and sometimes y).  A timeline can be made just you seeing how J came into use. 

He uses the name, Immanuel, "the maiden will be pregnant and will have a son, And they will name him Immanuel."  The word “Emmanuel” comes from the Greek rendering of two Hebrew words, `immanu, “with us,” and 'el, “God” (thus in English it is found as either “Emmanuel” or “Immanuel”)."The Gospel of Matthew (Matthew 1:22–23) interprets this as a prophecy of the birth of the Messiah and the fulfillment of Scripture in the person of Jesus. Immanuel "God (El) with us" is one of the "symbolic names" used by Isaiah, alongside Shearjashub, Maher-shalal-hash-baz, or Pele-joez-el-gibbor-abi-ad-sar-shalom".  Isaiah was the Jewish prophet from Jerusalem in 740-701BCE.  

Jesus is described by Matthew born in Bethlehem in Judea in the days of King Herod.  Herod I was king from 73 BCE to 4 BCE, king fo Judea, son of Antipater the Idumean by his Nabatean wife, Cypros.  First job was that as governor of Galilee.  The New Testament associates him with the Massacre of the Innocents.  He's the one who rebuilt the Temple in Jerusalem on a magnificent scale and erected the 2 new cities of Sebaste and Caesarea.  

It has traditionally been attributed to St. Matthew the Evangelist, one of the 12 Apostles, described in the text as a tax collector (10:3). The Gospel According to Matthew was composed in Greek, probably sometime after 70 ce, with evident dependence on the earlier Gospel According to Mark, but Matthew is listed first, anyway. Becoming a saint had to come later as Catholicism came as the first development of Christianity.  

The canonical gospels are the four which appear in the New Testament of the Bible. They were probably written between AD 66 and 110, according to Wikepedia.  Almost certainly none were by eyewitnesses, and all are the end-products of long oral and written transmission Mark was the first to be written, using a variety of sources. The authors of Matthew and Luke both independently used Mark for their narrative of Jesus's career, supplementing it with a collection of sayings called "the Q source", and additional material unique to each. There is near-consensus that John had its origins as the hypothetical Signs Gospel thought to have been circulated within a Johannine community. The contradictions and discrepancies between the first three and John make it impossible to accept both traditions as equally reliable.  John is the most anti-Semitic.  

In Jewish history, Jesus died in 29 CE, founder of Christianity.  There are no independent Jewish sources for the life of Jesus of Nazareth.  A reference in Josephus is at least in part a Christian interpolation;  allusion in the Talmud and the post-talmudic TOLEDOT YESHU (life story of Jesus)  are of value only as an indication of later Jewish attitudes.  The only source of information about Jesus is thus the New Testament Gospels.  

Ever since the Greeks had invaded Israel, Hellenization (Hellenization  is the adoption of Greek culture, religion, language, and identity by non-Greeks.)had started to affect many of the citizens.  It strikes me that Joseph and Mary were Hellenized Jews to start with, even speaking Greek.  So must have been Matthew.  It even permeated their understanding of Judaism and confused them, who were not that knowledgable about Judaism for starters as rabbis knew the most. 

The center, like a Yale or Harvard of Jewish knowledge, was Jerusalem.   A rabbi coming from another town with their knowledge was expected to spend time in Jerusalem continuing their learning.  We had rabbis in towns only after 70 CE.  Before that, all were educated by attending the Temple in Jerusalem.  

At the time of Jesus, Roman crucifiction was practiced at the drop of a hat on Jews.  "However, given that crucifixion was seen as an extremely shameful way to die, Rome tended not to crucify its own citizens. Instead, slaves, disgraced soldiers, Christians, foreigners, and — in particular — political activists often lost their lives in this way, Retief and Cilliers reported.  The practice became especially popular in the Roman-occupied Holy Land. In 4 B.C., the Roman general Varus crucified 2,000 Jews, and there were mass crucifixions during the first century A.D., according to the Roman-Jewish historian Josephus. "Christ was crucified on the pretext that he instigated rebellion against Rome, on a par with zealots and other political activists," the authors wrote in the report."  Emperor Titus was responsible.  The Romans perfected crucifion for 500 years until it was abolished by Emperor  Constantine I in the 4th century AD.(CE).  

The affect of Roman invasion of Judah, of their Occupation, was a traumatic as the Greek invasion earlier that caused Hellenization.  Young men were leaving their own family homes to live together in communes studying their Jewish history, and trying to see what the future was bringing to them.  In the late 330s BCE, Alexander the Great invaded the Middle East (including the area which is now Israel), during his campaigns against the Achaemenid Empire. In 63 bce the Roman general Pompey had captured Jerusalem. The Romans ruled through a local client king and largely allowed free religious practice in Judaea. At times, the divide between monotheistic and polytheistic religious views caused clashes between Jews and Gentiles.                           

The Dead Sea Scrolls were found in just such a place at Khirbet Kumran, 7.5 miles from Jericho, discovered in 1947.  A nearby cemetery held 1,000 graves.  Coins found there were from the days of John Hyrcanus, of Greek days.  It was destroyed in 31 BCE by an earthquake but rebuilt.  Writers of the scrolls were there until 68 CE, belonging to a Jewish sect.  

Reading Matthew doesn't give you all the history of that day.  It doesn't explain what Jews were going through, only to the followers of Jesus.  

Reference: 

https://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2022/10/king-davids-genealogy.html

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Gospel-According-to-Matthew

https://www.livescience.com/65283-crucifixion-history.html

https://hermeneutics.stackexchange.com/questions/927/what-is-the-significance-of-14-generations-in-matthew-s-account-of-jesuss-gen

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_(name)#:~:text=Jesus%20(%2F%CB%88d%CA%92i%CB%90z,to%20another%20biblical%20name%2C%20Joshua.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christ_(title)#:~:text=9%20Further%20reading-,Etymology,%2C%20meaning%20%22anointed%20one%22.

Verified 3,000 Years Ago In Clay and Stone

 Nadene Goldfoot                                           

Writing has been going on for over 4,000 years, making Moses's recording over his 40 year period believable.  He was raised as a prince, educated with the royal family children, so was literate.                             

Egypt had developed hieroglyphics for their writing and wrote on the walls of the pyramids.  "Ancient Egyptian writing is known as hieroglyphics ('sacred carvings') and developed at some point prior to the Early Dynastic Period (c. 3150 -2613 BCE). According to some scholars, the concept of the written word was first developed in Mesopotamia and came to Egypt through trade." This was a good 1,850 years before Moses, so their historical writing had been going on for a long time already.    

 Hieroglyphs were written on papyrus, carved in stone on tomb and temple walls, and used to decorate many objects of cultic and daily life use. Altogether there are over 700 different hieroglyphs, some of which represent sounds or syllables; others that serve as determinatives to clarify the meaning of a word. The hieroglyphic script originated shortly before 3100 B.C.E, at the very onset of pharaonic civilization. The last hieroglyphic inscription in Egypt was written in the 5th century CE., some 3500 years later. For almost 1500 years after that, the language was unable to be read. 

The Rosetta Stone:  An irregularly shaped stone of black granite 3 feet 9 inches (114 cm) long and 2 feet 4.5 inches (72 cm) wide, and broken in antiquity, it was found near the town of Rosetta (Rashīd), about 35 miles (56 km) northeast of Alexandria. It was discovered by a Frenchman named Bouchard or Boussard in August 1799. After the French surrender of Egypt in 1801, it passed into British hands and is now in the British Museum in London.

In 1799, the Rosetta Stone was discovered in Egypt by Napoleon's troops. The Rosetta Stone is a trilingual decree (written in hieroglyphs, Greek, and Demotic) dating to the time of Ptolemy V (205-180 B.C.E.). Its discovery proved to be a crucial link in unlocking the mysteries of Egyptian hieroglyphs and in 1822, enabling Jean-François Champollion to re-decipher the hieroglyphic signs, thereby allowing the modern study of Egyptian language to begin.                               

We're used to seeing them in modern-day Hebrew, but-perhaps they were in ancient Hebrew.  

  Paleo-Hebrew alphabet:  The Paleo-Hebrew script (Hebrew: הכתב העברי הקדום), also Palaeo-Hebrew, Proto-Hebrew or Old Hebrew, is the writing system found in Canaanite inscriptions from the region of biblical Israel and Judah.

In about 1,300 BCE, which was 3,322 years ago, Moses wrote the 10 Commandments on 2 stone tablets while on top of a mountain.  Etched in stone, they have lasted down to this very day, transferred to other materials.  "According to the Book of Exodus in the Torah, the Ten Commandments were revealed to Moses at Mount Sinai and inscribed by the finger of God on two tablets of stone kept in the Ark of the Covenant."

LACHISH, Israel (BP) — A written inscription spelling the biblical name “Jerubbaal” or “Yeruba’al,” has been found during an archaeological dig in a Southern District of Israel, according to media reports.

The five-letter inscription, written on a jug and dated around the 12^th or 11^th century B.C.E, was found by researchers at “Khirbat er-Ra‘I”, an archaeological site in Israel that has been excavated since 2015, according to The Jerusalem Post. Researchers cited by The Times Israel claim the inscription most likely reads as the biblical name “Jerubbaal” or “Yeruba’al.”

Dead Sea Scrolls: The Dead Sea Scrolls are ancient Jewish and Hebrew religious manuscripts discovered in 1946/47 at the Qumran Caves in what was then Mandatory Palestine, near Ein Feshkha in Judea Samaria, on the northern shore of the Dead Sea which is now in Jordan.  

They are approximately two thousand years old, dating from the third century BCE to the first century CE. Most of the scrolls were written in Hebrew, with a smaller number in Aramaic or Greek. Most of them were written on parchment, with the exception of a few written on papyrus.

Akkadian Cuniform:  

                                                    

Early Writing Tablet recording the allocation of beer, 3100-3000 B.C.E,  Late Prehistoric period, clay, probably from southern Iraq.
© Trustees of the British Museum. The symbol for beer, an upright jar with pointed base, appears three times on the tablet. Beer was the most popular drink in Mesopotamia and was issued as rations to workers. Alongside the pictographs are five different shaped impressions, representing numerical symbols. Over time these signs became more abstract and wedge-like, or “cuneiform.” The signs are grouped into boxes and, at this early date, are usually read from right to left and top to bottom. One sign, in the bottom row on the left, shows a bowl tipped towards a schematic human head. This is the sign for “to eat.”

Hammurabi, King of Babylon reunited Mesopotamia and instituted the Code of Hammurabi, a comprehensive set of laws addressing nearly all aspects of both civil and criminal offenses. Hammurabi is portrayed receiving the laws directly from Shamash the sun god. (a parallel to Moses can be made here).  

The Code of Hammurabi is a Babylonian legal text composed c. 1755–1750 BCE. It is the longest, best-organized, and best-preserved legal text from the ancient Near East. It is written in the Old Babylonian dialect of Akkadian, purportedly by Hammurabi, sixth king of the First Dynasty of Babylon.  This happened about 455 years before the 10 Commandments from Moses.  

Cuneiform as a robust writing tradition endured 3,000 years. The script—not itself a language—was used by scribes of multiple cultures over that time to write a number of languages other than Sumerian, most notably Akkadian, a Semitic language that was the lingua franca of the Assyrian and Babylonian Empires.

The Ebla tablets are a collection of as many as 1,800 complete clay tablets, 4,700 fragments, and many thousands of minor chips found in the palace archives of the ancient city of Ebla, Syria. The tablets were discovered by Italian archaeologist Paolo Matthiae and his team in 1974–75 during their excavations at the ancient city at Tell Mardikh. The tablets, which were found in situ on collapsed shelves, retained many of their contemporary clay tags to help reference them.  Now Ebla's tablets, says Dr. Pettinato, reveal that a city named Ur existed in Syria in the area of Haran (and Ebla). If true, this may show that the two cities mentioned in Genesis are actually one, and finally clear up the contradiction.

                  Abram and his father, Terah

As for the general relevance of Ebla for understanding Abraham, it will ultimately depend on when you think he lived.  Some scholars date him as early as the 3rd millennium BCE; others as late as the late 2nd millennium BCE. Some doubt his historical existence altogether, but most scholars gravitate to a date around 1800 BCE. Our Jewish historians have 1391 BCE for his birth and 1271 BCE for his death at age 120 years.  

They all date to the period between c. 2500 BCE and the destruction of the city c. 2250 BCE. Today, the tablets are held in museums in the Syrian cities of Aleppo, Damascus, and Idlib. Above is part of the excavation.  

Life in the Middle East was recorded for posterity.  There is no reason to think that it wasn't.  Like today, the heads of state had their history recorded and what they wanted remembered was usually all the good things about themselves.  Egyptian history is noted for this.  Little was said about their slaves, the Israelites.  It was up to Moses to record those things.

 A difference in Hebrew ancient literature is that it tells the bad along with the good.  David's mistakes are recorded.  The same goes for others, like his son, Solomon taxing people past their limit, Samson falling for Delilah who was of the enemy of Israel.  

The invention of the alphabet took place in Canaan around the 18th century BCE.  The story in (Judg. 8:14) shows that boys were taught about the Gezer Calendar in about 1,000 BCE.  which may have been a school exercise.  Personal seals usually had picture identification on them.  Most Hebrew seals contained the owner's name.  It's figured that the ordinary man should be able to read.  Reading was important to carry out business.  

Resource:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleo-Hebrew_alphabet

https://www.baptistpress.com/resource-library/news/3000-year-old-inscription-could-be-oldest-discovered-evidence-of-hebrew-language/

https://www.archaeology.org/issues/213-1605/features/4326-cuneiform-the-world-s-oldest-writing#:~:text=Cuneiform%20as%20a%20robust%20writing,the%20Assyrian%20and%20Babylonian%20Empires.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Hammurabi#:~:text=The%20Code%20of%20Hammurabi%20is,the%20First%20Dynasty%20of%20Babylon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebla_tablets

https://www.afhu.org/2017/01/09/bringing-life-to-the-dead-sea-scrolls/?

https://www.imj.org.il/en/wings/shrine-book/dead-sea-scrolls#:~:text=They%20are%20approximately%20two%20thousand,a%20few%20written%20on%20papyrus.

gclid=CjwKCAjw2rmWBhB4EiwAiJ0mtYGTs54e6fnQQHRK5lxKO4n7w-jDLCYNg4r69FgjziEAOlfW-aSg0BoCa5QQAvD_BwE

Essene's Belief System Found in the Caves at Qumran in the Dead Sea Scrolls

 Nadene Goldfoot                                              

                                  The caves of Qumran

Judea's history of the close of the  2nd Temple Period and the Romans also includes the Essenes, a group of a sect of Jews less mentioned..  

The first reference to the sect is by the Roman writer Pliny the Elder (died c. 79 CE) in his Natural History. Pliny relates in a few lines that the Essenes possess no money, had existed for thousands of generations, and that their priestly class  do not marry.  Pliny places them somewhere above Ein Gedi, next to the Dead Sea.

                                                                 

Pliny, also a geographer, located them in the desert near the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea, where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered.  These scrolls were found in 1947 by a young shepherd in a cave in the area, possibly looking for a lost lamb.  They were in the area of Khirbet Kumran, 7.5 miles from Jericho, later called Qumran, on the NW shore of the Dead Sea.  Excavations have gone on since 1949.  Wadi Qumran held many of the first scrolls found.  This would be in Judah which was a part of Jordan from 1948 to 1967.  

 Philo did not mention any particular geographical location of the Essenes other than the whole land of Israel,  In the time of Philo, the Essenes numbered about 4,000 and lived in several towns and villages.  

Josephus later gave a detailed account of the Essenes in The Jewish War (c. 75 CE), with a shorter description in Antiquities of the Jews (c. 94 CE) and The Life of Flavius Josephus (c. 97 CE). 

Claiming first hand knowledge, Josephus lists the Essenoi as one of the three sects of Jewish philosophy alongside the Pharisees and the Sadducees. He relates the same information concerning piety, celibacy, the absence of personal property and of money, the belief in communality, and commitment to a strict observance of Sabbath. 

He further adds that the Essenes ritually immersed in water every morning, ate together after prayer, devoted themselves to charity and benevolence, forbade the expression of anger, studied the books of the elders, preserved secrets, and were very mindful of the names of the angels kept in their sacred writings.                                                                    

News of the Essenes stopped after the destruction of the 2nd temple in 586 BCE by the Babylonians.  1947's discovery of the scrolls has awakened a lot of interest in the scrolls themselves.  

Archeologists later discovered a cemetery of over 1,000 graves, a central building and central caves containing fragments of old documents.  Coins found on the site showed it to have been lived in from the time of John Hyrcanus, the son and successor of Simon the Hasmonean who ruled from 135 to 104 BCE.  Hyrcanus was the governor of Gezer, but after the murder of his father and 2 brothers by his brother-in-law, Ptolemy,  escaped to Jerusalem, where he seized power before Ptolemy could gain control.  The Hasmoneans were a priestly family of Cohens  founded by Mattathias of Modiin.  It was Matathias and his 5 sons, Judah the Maccabee, Jonathan, Simon, John and Eleazar who led the fight against the Greek Syrians' sent by  King Antiochus Epiphanes from 166-164 BCE.  Jews celebrate Chanukah to remember this fight that caused the religion of Judaism to continue by putting an end to the Greek occupancy and takeover of the Temple.  The Feast of Lights holiday with its 8 branched menorah remembers the renewing of the Eternal Light that hung in the Temple.   

There is evidence of an earlier period of occupancy. It was apparently destroyed by an earthquake in 31 BCE and rebuilt not long thereafter.  The Essenes lived there until 68 CE. This is important to know as Jerusalem and the Temple were burned down by the Romans in 70 CE.                                                             

Both the contents of the scrolls and the archeological findings show that these people belonged to a Jewish sect.  They found 2 complete copies of Isaiah, the prophet in Jerusalem (740-701 BCE)  and fragments of nearly every other book of the Bible.  Generally speaking, the scrolls justify a conservative approach for biblical study with the exception of a fragment from the Book of Samuel which resembles the version known to the Greek translators.  Fragments were found of the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha (noncanonical Jewish literature written during the period of the 2nd Temple  and for some time after its destruction until 132-135 CE of Bar Kokhba's revolt, ) and other books unknown as well as of familiar works like the Book of Tobit, part of the Apocrypha that includes a story about a Sarah who had been married 7 times, and the Hebrew version of Jubilees, a pseudepigraphical work of the history of mankind related by an angel to Moses on Mt Sinai,  and the Aramaic version of the Book of Enoch, also from  the apocryphal work.  . 

Sectarian books were found like a commentary on the Book of Habakkuk, and part of a commentary on the Books of Micah, Nahum and others.  These commentaries explain the prophetic writings in relation to the history of the sect.  

Another scroll includes the plan of the struggle of THE SONS OF LIGHT (members of the sect) against THE SONS OF DARKNESS, which was to begin with the conquest of Judah and would end 40 years later with the conquest of the whole world.  This was figured to happen in about 50-60 CE.                                            

The Scroll of Thanksgiving comprises religious hymns which develop in poetic fashion the sect's theological doctrines.  One scroll deals with the sect's organization and teachings:  In addition there are pieces from the Zadokite Documents-like from the Cairo genizah.  

                                                                     

                                                       Bait Ha Mikdash or Temple 

The Copper Scroll  describes hidden treasure and the Temple Scroll contains a minute description of the Temple.   

Christians were excited by the find, hoping to find more proof of Jesus.  The initial excitement was the hope that this community, contemporary with the ministry of Jesus, would have some record of him (and fill in those “lost years of Jesus”). But there is no mention of Jesus, John the Baptist or anyone else associated with the Gospels.  Information about the group of people living there took on a secret way of writing about themselves, using code names from biblical people and places in order to cover their tracks from the Romans, who would have killed them, claims Dr. Barbara Thiering, who wrote "Jesus and the Riddle of the Dead Sea Scrolls." 

Another commentator, Rebecca Denova  that said about a cleric, Mr. Bergsma, who made claims about Jesus sources.   "None of the four Gospels were written by eyewitnesses, and the first, Mark, was written 40 years after the death of Jesus. Matthew and Luke (and some of John) began with Mark and edited and adapted it as different issues arose within their communities over time. We do not have “four independent sources for the ministry” as Mr. Bergsma claims, and thus his proof for historicity. He treats the Gospel narratives as the literal and historical teachings of Jesus. It would have been more historically legitimate to perhaps draw a direct line from Qumran to the evangelists.

                                                                   

Sadducees developed during the 2nd Temple period, developing possibly from thoughts of Zadok, the High Priest who served King David, whose descendants served until 162 BCE.  They held that they were to be good in this world without expecting recompense in the world to come, without a resurrection or the immortality of the soul, nor did they believe in angels or spirits.  They kept to Moses's written law but not the Oral law and had harsher punishments than the Pharisees.  The Zadokite Fragments like the ones in Cairo contains a serman alluding to an emigration of the sect to the land of Damascus.  PERHAPS THE SECT'S NAME FOR THIS WAS FOR AN ENTIRELY DIFFERENT PLACE IN MIND AND A "NEW COVENANT" THERE."                                                

Judaism  was divided between the Sadducees and the Pharisees in observance and philosophy.  The Essenes were more like the Pharisee position, yet they had their own specific beliefs and customs.  

They had a dualistic outlook in that they believed a power of good ruling in the world but in opposition was the power of evil, and they saw themselves as the CHOSEN SONS OF LIGHT,  elected by G-d.  They believed in a Holy Spirit which had been granted to them, and with this power attained to a knowledge of DIVINE SECRETS and their apocalyptic  circles, among whom THE BOOK OF ENOCH and similar works were composed, which probably influenced the beginnings of Christianity, especially the circles close to Paul and John the Evangelist.  

They believed in the immortality of the soul

Reward and punishment

No physical resurrection.  

Opposed slavery and private property, animal sacrifice at Temple, etc., bringing only oil and flour.

Novices wanting in the group had a 3 year initiation , then swore not to reveal the sect's secrets. 

An all male fraternity, Living  in an abstemious communal life. Before eating a meal, they immersed themselves in water. 

 They practiced celibacy. but fought against the Romans like other Judeans.  

Some married for the perpetuation of mankind and their group, so had to leave to procreate and had differing rules about this: ie. every 7th year would visit the wife. These rules varied with each group.  

Their occupation mainly was of farming.  They had been farmers.  

Resource: 

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

https://www.post-gazette.com/ae/books/2019/10/18/John-Bergsma-Dead-Sea-Scrolls-Revealing-Jewish-Roots-Christianity-review/stories/201910200011#:~:text=The%20initial%20excitement%20was%20the,else%20associated%20with%20the%20Gospels.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qumran

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essenes