Dead Sea Scrolls-IAC Training Video

The Dead Sea Scrolls as a Tool for Bible Reliability

So let's take a look at the scrolls. The first scroll we're going to take a look at is called the Ten Commandments Scroll. You can see here it's a smaller scroll, but it's very long. And this scroll was discovered in the Qumran caves with the other Dead Sea Scrolls.

The Dead Sea Scrolls were first discovered back in 1947. And you can find more on that in various books dealing with the reliability of the Bible. So this is a really neat artifact that you can use when talking about the Dead Sea Scrolls.

So I'll show you another Dead Sea Scroll that we have in a minute. And it's of an extra-biblical writing. It was discovered at Qumran. But before we look at that, I want to show you this really neat book.

It's called From the Dead Sea Scrolls to the Bible in America. And this book was based on an exhibit of the same name that went over many of these different artifacts. And this book has some really interesting quotes in it.

And I just want to read one quick quote that talks about the reliability of the Bible. Here you can find it on page 16.

It says,.

The Dead Sea Scrolls constitute the greatest discovery ever made in the field of biblical textual studies. This discovery took the manuscript tradition of the Hebrew Bible over a thousand years further back into ancient history and ended doubts about the accuracy of the textual transmission of the Hebrew Scriptures from antiquity to the medieval world.

The Dead Sea Scrolls have been very reassuring on this point, as the ancient beginnings of the Bible have been finally and indisputably set in a secure context. Before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the earliest known Hebrew biblical manuscripts were from the 10th century A .D., and the earliest complete Hebrew Bible was from about the year 1000 A .D., whereas the Dead Sea Scrolls can be accurately dated to circa 250 B .C. to 68 A .D.

The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls effectively put to rest any argument about the fact that certain prophecies were written before the lifetime of Jesus, as had been claimed about the prophetic writings of Isaiah and Daniel.

The Son of God Scroll and the Essenes at Qumran

So this is just another helpful tool that you can use when talking about the reliability of the Bible, because it has quotes like that in it. So let's take a look at our other Dead Sea Scroll. This Dead Sea Scroll is interesting.

It's called the Son of God Scroll. Now, the Dead Sea Scrolls were written by a group of people known as the Essenes, who lived at the Qumran community around the time of Jesus. And they copied many different types of literature.

They copied Old Testament books, as well as some other extra-biblical writings. And this is one of the extra-biblical writings that they had in their collection. And it's interesting because it's talking in this passage about someone that sounds very, very much like the Jewish Messiah prophesied in the Old Testament.

It refers to an eternal kingdom that God would establish through him, and that he would be called the Son of God, the Son of the Most High. So it's a very interesting passage to talk about when talking about what Jewish people around the time of Jesus were expecting in their Messiah.

Now I do have to warn you, the Dead Sea Scrolls were written by a Jewish sect. So they don't necessarily represent mainline Judaism, but it does provide an interesting window into what some groups of Jews were thinking around the time of Jesus about who the Messiah would be.

Messianic Prophecies and Psalm 2

When talking about this, you can also talk about the Messianic prophecies in the Old Testament that talked about the Messiah as being a mighty God, an everlasting Father. And how in Psalm chapter 2, it talks about the Son, that God's Son would be seated on the throne of David, and he would be given all the kingdoms of the earth, and he would rule the nations with a rod of iron.

Which sounds very much like the person described in this text. Which shows that the designation of the Messiah as the Son of God was derived from the Jewish understanding of the Messiah. So when Jesus came and claimed to be the Son of God, the Jewish people knew what he was claiming to be.

They knew he was claiming to be the Messiah of Israel who had come to save them.