Word: sects
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...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 Withdrawn into the desert from the persecution of a corrupt priesthood in Jerusalem, holding in contempt the scribes and Pharisees (whom they called "Seekers After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...
...turbulence that has beset Indo-China in the past decade, none lived a more dangerous and colorful life than young Le Quang Vinh. He led a 20,000-man army all his own, recruited from the Hoa Hao, a sect which successfully combined religion and pillage. To dramatize his hatred of the French, he chopped off the end of a finger and called himself Ba Cut. In protest against the Geneva conference that split Viet Nam, he refused to cut his hair. Refusing also to recognize the sovereignty of the new nation of South Viet Nam, he terrorized the back...
...Hutterites of South Dakota may now buy new farm land. This right was confirmed for members of the religious sect last week when Circuit Judge Charles Hanson ruled that a 1955 law against establishing new communal farms or expanding old ones (TIME, June 4) is "too vague, indefinite and uncertain to be enforceable." The law as enacted by the South Dakota legislature is an admitted effort to check the growth of the frugal, efficient Hutterite cooperatives...
...finding of "this book," whatever and wherever it is. Experts, accustomed to Middle Eastern tall tales of buried treasure, are skeptical of the troves' existence-especially since the quantity is so huge. But this is not likely to keep scholars from speculating as to what an otherworldly sect of ascetics like the Essenes might be doing with such a hoard. Nor is it likely to keep treasure seekers from getting out picks and shovels and starting...