Word: qumran
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Dead Sea Scrolls have already raised more dust in Christendom than anything since Darwin, and will certainly kick up more in years to come. It is well known that the scrolls were the sacred documents of a monastic sect living 20 centuries ago at Qumran, in what is now Jordan, and that the members of the sect hid the scrolls in caves to safeguard them from advancing Roman legions. But who were these people of the Dead Sea? The question is momentous, because they lived near the place where John the Baptist preached the Messiah's coming, during...
Though he does not see the Qumran sect as the originator of Christianity, Allegro feels that it profoundly influenced the first Christians. Withdrawn into the desert from the persecution of a corrupt priesthood in Jerusalem, holding in contempt the scribes and Pharisees (whom they called "Seekers After Smooth Things"), the Qumran community practiced baptism, chastity, community of goods. They wrote the ritual of a Messianic banquet with breaking of bread and blessing of wine, which Allegro boldly suggests may prefigure the Last Supper and Christian Communion. They expected the imminent end of the world and the coming of two Messiahs...
...John Marc Allegro of Manchester University last January (TIME, Feb. 6). Philologist Allegro, who had worked on the team deciphering the so-called Dead Sea Scrolls in Jerusalem, drew an imposing number of dramatic parallels between Jesus Christ and the Teacher of Righteousness mentioned in the scrolls of the Qumran community, which were found almost nine years ago near the Dead...
...broadcasts, Allegro had been far more assured. He spoke then of the pre-Christian Teacher's "probable" crucifixion at the hands of the "wicked priest," of his followers' hope for his return to lead the "people of the New Testament," as the Qumran community called themselves, to "a new and purified Jerusalem." The parallels seemed so pat and Allegro so sure of himself that experts assumed that he had had access to a bombshell of a discovery...
...foundations of Christianity will hardly be shaken by the disclosure of an earlier Jewish sect's similarities to Christianity. Christians shared common Old Testament tradition with the Qumran sect. Similarities may, in fact, indicate acceptance by the later Christians of some of the Essene beliefs. Christianity has never claimed discontinuity with the antecedent Judaism...