The Dead Sea Scrolls

F.F. Bruce is known as one of the experts and scholars in reviewing and classifying the origins of Christianity. He dedicated part of his work to studying the Dead Sea Scrolls, analyzing their discovery and what it meant for biblical studies in general and the world of the New Testament in particular.

Bruce reviews and narrates the process of the discovery of the Qumran texts, where and how they were found, what they contain, who wrote them, how they got there, and what they mean today.

Fifty years have passed since Bruce wrote his work, a period masterfully covered by one of the leading modern authorities on the subject, Professor Florentino García Martínez, who enriches this book with an analysis of the changes and perspectives after half a century of Qumranic study.

The discovery of the first seven scrolls of the 'Dead Sea Scrolls' or 'Qumran Scrolls' by Jum'a and his cousin Mohammed ed-Dhib, two Bedouin shepherds of the Ta'amireh tribe, in a cave on the Dead Sea shore in 1947, launched a revolution in the investigation of the biblical text and in our understanding of the origins of Christianity, which today, at the beginning of the 21st century, no serious theologian dares to question. This collection of Jewish manuscripts, written in Hebrew and Aramaic between 150 BC and 70 AD, and progressively discovered over the last fifty years in eleven caves, now numbers 900. They include the books of the "Tanakh" or O.T. except the book of Esther; the so-called "Deuterocanonical" books; commentaries on each of the books of the O.T.; the rules, manuals and prayers of the Community; and various other texts from the intertestamental period, such as the "Book of Enoch", "The Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs", "The Book of Jubilees", etc. The questions that this discovery raises, both with regard to the O.T. and the N.T., are as fascinating as they are important:

Regarding the Old Testament: How do these ancient biblical manuscripts fit with those we already knew and on which the text of our Bible versions is based? Do they allow us to introduce large-scale corrections to the Masoretic manuscripts? Why has the book of Esther not been found among them?
Regarding the New Testament: To what extent do the theological antecedents and parallels between some teachings of these Manuscripts and those of the New Testament extend? Was there really a collaboration between Christians and Essenes for a certain period and then they separated? Was Paul with the Essenes of Damascus when he writes "I went into Arabia (or Desert), and then returned to Damascus" (Gal. 1:17)?