Dead Sea Scrolls: What Apologists Hope You'll Never Find Out (feat. Dr James Tabor)

[Music] hmm Jesus dead these girls hey hey you got your Jesus you got your Dead Sea Scrolls on my Jesus what delicious you can study the Scrolls you can study Jesus but put them together is just fascinating [Music] welcome to apologia we're a former Christian takes a look at the claims of Christians today I'm pleased to be joined once again by Bible scholar Professor Dr James D Tabor good to be with you again James was formerly at UNC Charlotte but is now spending his retirement educating enthusiastic regular people like you and me he is one of 10 All-Star speakers at the imminent new insight into the New Testament conference which you can still sign up for and maybe see me hanging around so good yeah yeah I'm gonna talk about the gospel of Mark moving the goal post it has to do with apocalypticism and say well we weren't wrong look the goal post is up here you say yeah but you had it here first I'm not sure we'll count that touchdown sorry and he's also got a brand new course on the Dead Sea Scrolls which is coincidentally the topic we're going to be talking about today Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls I take what we know of G Jesus and his followers and I compare it to the Dead Sea scroll Community they have some real similarities people who tried to say yeah but there's all these differences and there are but that does not in any way remove the parallels so that's what we do in the course we explore every aspect of that in 10 lectures we take you through it in a good way just like we would with undergrad students but very accessible to people I know you prefer the realm of scholarship but here on my channel we live in the world of Christian apologetics as you know some Christians love to exaggerate about the Dead Sea Scrolls yeah it's just crazy it's crazy we've got several apologists today so buckle up okay I'm gonna ride with you so starting with Sean the younger McDowell who admits that he leans toward theatrics when faced with ambiguity the Dead Sea Scrolls help us to answer the question of why we can trust the Bible the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls took place in early 1947. three Bedouin Shepherds boys who were really cousins were exploring in the mountainous area Northwest of the Dead Sea and one threw a rock inside this cave and they heard Pottery shattered so they decided they were going to come back the next day and explore it well one of the cousins got up early by himself and he's actually been called The Wolf went up there early climbed over went down inside and found a jar that had been shattered and inside it were a bunch of Scrolls he was disappointed to come across a few ancient Scrolls he had no idea that these Scrolls would be worth millions of dollars and turn the archaeological and biblical world upside down that is so fascinating I've heard some of the different stories and always wondered exactly what do we know and maybe this is a part of some of the folklore that it's been told differently and we can't have the Precision that we're looking for but the Bedouin throwing a rock is the coolest most interesting one so I'm going with that one well this finding treasure in caves is is a kind of a Trope or an idea that you find in lots of literature but in this case we do know something about the Bedouin tribe we think it was the summer of 1946 and the young boys that initially made the discovery were interviewed by John Trevor he was in Jerusalem at the time in condo who's the dealer so I think the basic framework of the story is correct now stories can always get sensationalized like were they looking for a lost sheep or something like that did they throw a rock in and hear something break that could be an excited tale of a kid telling something because he doesn't want to get in trouble as he comes home with this Trove of manuscripts but there's no doubt they came from that cave and then when the archaeologists and the scholars went out to what's called cave one that's the one that was discovered by these better ones they found ample evidence that backed up their story there are 10 jars in in the cave all sorts of fragments of Scrolls because it had been sort of rummaged through but they did find in one of the jars and that's what the boys began to take to the market in Bethlehem and try to sell it six Scrolls that are particularly important complete copy of Isaiah the community rule which is the charter of the community very valuable they're substantial scroll is pretty complete and they were there and I don't think there's any doubt about that speaking of that complete Isaiah scroll Sean's father Josh McDowell is one of many Christians who overstate the extent to which it can attest to a reliable transmission of the Old Testament they were absolutely amazed at the accuracy over a Thousand-Year Gap with the accuracy of the scroll from 900 A.D with the school of Isaiah of 125 BC in fact in one chapter of 166 words in Isaiah in a thousand years of transcription there were only three letters that were different and it was a letter that made up the word light after 1 000 years this is one reason why I I just came the obvious conclusion to me that I could take the scriptures hold them in my hand and say thus Seth the lord it's very very upsetting to me to hear that he should know better first of all one chapter I think there's 66 chapters maybe we should look at them all and I think he must know this but then when he draws this vast conclusion that we can be sure we're reading the same Isaiah that's simply incorrect I've got here anybody can get it the Dead Sea scroll Bible this is an English translation of all of the Scrolls from qumran from the Dead Sea scroll caves in English and when you open it up you can see the changes there I think there's more than three and I just picked a random page I'm in Isaiah 43 and 44. and wow 17 changes on one page you say yeah but it's just like three letter no it's not three letters it's like one text says n u or transgressions or not remember your sins and the other text will say something entirely different so either he doesn't know this I would like to think that he's just not aware of it maybe some Professor told him this and some Seminary he went to or something or he does know it and if he does know it it is extremely upsetting to me because people want to hang on to this and if it's grossly inact then I think that's a moral issue whatever people want to believe about the Bible they should form it with the facts and in this case you've got the Greek translation called the Septuagint you've got the masoretic text the traditional text that's in everybody's English Bible today and you've got the Dead Sea Scrolls so you would have to be aware of all of that if you're going to be honest and then form your views of the Bible but you wouldn't take just the Greek and say oh God inspired that I'll never look at the masoretic or I'll take the masoretic but I would never look at the Greek and now you have copies that are 1100 years older than the masoretic and there are significant differences I mean I can give you examples if you would like one I'll give you my favorite example sure let's do it this is in Deuteronomy 32 it's called the song of Moses this is the maseretic text if you open any English Bible you'll tend to get this unless it's a modern translation that is adapted and adopted the newer readings okay when the most high divided the Nations their inheritance when he separated the sons of Adam he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel now that's King James version RSV ASV NIV all of them masoretic texts listen to this Dead Sea Scrolls when the most high divided the Nations their inheritance he separated the Sun of Adam he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the sons of God the binay Elohim they're mentioned in Psalm 86 this is that Angelic Council of the most high were the Elohim the gods sit around and they discuss things look it up in Psalm 82. now what are we going to do with that the Septuagint by the way agrees with the Dead Sea Scrolls against the masturetic texts so here we've got two textual Traditions that agree with one another and the one everybody thinks is inspired by God doesn't agree and also if you start analyzing it academically which you should it's not skeptical to want to deal with facts you know what you finally decide about your faith or anything can vary but get the facts straight and what would be the best guess as to why the Jewish masoretic text takes out the Bene Elohim because they sound like it's polytheistic like God's got these other other gods that he said I'll put you over Persia and I'll put you over Greece and that's exactly what you get in the Book of Daniel if you remember in the Book of Daniel one of the Angels says I was fighting with the guy who's over Persia and it took me 21 days to take him down but now I'm here to give the Revelation to you Daniel this is reflecting a culture of the time and there are honest evangelicals like the late Michael Heiser who at least dealt with that and they did deal with the facts and he didn't misrepresent those readings he considered them but there are lots of others who unfortunately like this quote it's just so historically inaccurate does it make a difference well it's two different readings and it's two different views I would certainly think that the Dead Sea School reading is the original if you want to know what went back to the oldest tradition when Deuteronomy was written it's got to be the Mane Elohim because we have so many other references to them and now they're kind of written out of the story because it sounds like oh there's other gods who can't have that but they're all over the Hebrew Bible if you studied it how about Genesis 6 the sons of God saw the daughters of men it's the same phrase to his son Sean's credit his guest Anthony Ferguson also corrected this overstatement from father Josh for oftentimes what apologists do and I've been guilty of doing this is draw from the book of Isaiah conclusion about the copying over a thousand years without maybe putting this in context to some of the other books that are in the Dead Sea Scrolls and some of the larger stories what's not safe is to say well because that's true therefore the Old Testament has been copied Reliant reliably and you know it should be clear why that's not a safe conclusion to drum based on that one piece of evidence right because one Q Isaiah a is not a manuscript of the entire Old Testament it's just Isaiah so it doesn't say anything about the copying of Jeremiah it doesn't say anything about the copying of Ezekiel it's just a manuscript of of Isaiah in an entirely other sphere of apologetic Dead Sea scroll over extension we have Dr John bergsma are you familiar with his work I know his name but I don't know his work no he's a Catholic apologist and he makes some rather bold assertions about John the Baptist and his affiliation with the Dead Sea scroll Community everything that is said about uh John the Baptist um in the gospels has some kind of resonance with uh the essene movement and yeah so to to go right on down the line there's so there's so many things first of all there's Geographic proximity at no point in that stretch of the Jordan River are you more than a day's walk from the monastery that is at the site at cumran we noticed that when John is questioned about his identity he appeals to Isaiah 40 verse 3. a voice cries in the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord it's not an influential passage in broader Judaism but then you have the monks and you have John the Baptist both making very prominent use of that verse to justify their existence but then a particular aspect of John's Ministry that seems to point to him having been expelled from the community is the fact that he's eating off the land you know that curious statement in Mark and Matthew that he was eating locusts and Wild Honey because they had taken vows not to eat food prepared outside the community and so guys that got kicked out had to eat grass or whatever they could find they could not eat prepared foods and that's what it appears that John the Baptist is doing so there may have been one or two you know as many as four of the Apostles may have been may have had a background in essenism uh prior uh to um you know following Jesus I wouldn't go that far and I'll tell you why because you're talking about a community that spread over a period of over 100 150 years they last all the way up to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70. that's when these Scrolls we think were hidden away and some of them date into the period of the first century in terms of radiocarbon dating so the group is out there but as you begin to read the Scrolls you begin to uncover a certain strictness that basically would make Jesus and John as co-workers as cooperating together in the same kind of an apocalyptic Messianic movement very alien to this group now that's not to say there aren't similarities for example both groups talk about I would describe them like this apocalyptic Messianic preparing the way in the wilderness New Covenant children of light Amer nursing and water is initiation a prophet like Moses Council of twelve selling your possessions so if that's all I told you you would think wow let's throw Jesus in why just John the Baptist I mean Jesus is teaching him many of these same things that I just named new covenanters children of light those phrases are only used in the Scrolls and in the New Testament Apostle Paul uses children of light Jesus uses it in the Gospel of John so you know why pick John the Baptist there's this idea that he's this kind of rigid guy out in the desert and he's strict in Jesus is liberal and yet if you have the tiny little snippet of teachings of John that survive you know what he says let him who has no bread share with him who has none but him who has two coats share with him who has one and so forth sounds kind of like Sermon on the Mount stuff and that's in the cue source that we have of John's teaching so I would say that John and Jesus are parallel to this movement but they're much lighter than the Scrolls the Scrolls were written in the early part of the movement if an apocalyptic movement goes through a period of disappointment of prophecies and expectations failing you have a second even a third generation there can be a sense of kind of loosening up on things I think we see it with groups like Jehovah's Witnesses Mormons seven-day Adventists and they all go back to the 1830s 40s 50s but today they've had to make adjustments you know we don't have a clear handle on what people at qumran were saying let's say in 30 CE when Jesus was around or when John the Baptist was around they could have developed in ways that don't reflect the earlier Scrolls that we're reading I usually say to my students I don't think either one is a card-caring member and based on what the Scrolls say they're very very strict and I don't see any indication and that John is sharing those sort of views of segregation he talks to Roman soldiers he talks to non-jews he talks to tax collectors and sinners as they're called seems to address the same kind of broad audience that Jesus did and so I wouldn't agree with that but I don't want to play Down the parallels that's what my course is about Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls there's strong differences and also strong similarities well on the opposite side of the pendulum is Dr Craig Evans I know Craig very well we've actually excavated together in Jerusalem so well Dr Evans was recently asked about the connections between John and Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls that it seems you're putting forth he says how does this discovery affect the claim that the qumran community worshiped an early version of Jesus a teacher of righteousness who died rose from the dead and then ascended into heaven now since the Scrolls were first found people have played with this idea that maybe Jesus was from qumran maybe he was in a scene maybe some of his followers were maybe the Dead Sea Scrolls refer to him on and on a ghost I don't subscribe to any of that and mainstream scholarship does not either is there work outside the mainstream well there is a tendency I think among all of us to emphasize the differences because the two movements are not identical so if both talk about the New Covenant one could have a different view of the new covet and what it includes than the other if both are Messianic apocalyptic share their goods in common practice ritual initiation there can be differences and there are differences but the Matrix is worth talking about I think he might be in I know Craig really well he's a friend of mine I think he might be referring more to this oversimplified idea of oh death Barrel Resurrection yeah they believe that too I do think that there is evidence in the things giving hymns and quite a few Scholars agree with this these were written partially we think by the teacher himself that he does say in the first person I've ascended to Heaven I've taken my seat among the gods and that could start sounding like his projection of himself like the Apostle Paul talks about ascending to Heaven Jesus talks about ascending to heaven and some of the traditions of the New Testament but he's probably reacting against this too rigid of a pattern which I would also agree with but I don't think we should plate on the parallels the way I usually say it I list out these parallels 10 or 12 and then I usually make the point none of these 12 apply in any way to the Pharisees or the Sadducees the other two groups that we know something about okay well if none of them apply but all 12 apply to the Jesus movement in the scroll group we do have something to talk about and that's what my course is about but I do think the strict version of the Kumon group that we get in the early traditions of the Scrolls like the community rule or the Damascus document two of the documents we cover in the course they would not have liked Jesus they might go hey you got New Covenant your Messianic your apocalyptic and all that but you know if we have a lamb fall in a ditch on the Sabbath we're not going to get up and help it out because that would take a lot of work and it's more important to obey God and rest on the Sabbath than to help that lamb out of the ditch and Jesus actually addresses that in the Gospel of Luke he says is there somebody that wouldn't help an animal out of a ditch on the Sabbath well he wouldn't even have said that and yes there were people like that and he's trying to shame them he also says what goes into the mouth doesn't have fell and then he makes a joke it's mistranslated as does he declare it all foods clean so that people can eat pork and shrimp that's not what he's talking about he's actually if you read the Greek he says it goes into your mouth through your intestines out your rear end into the toilet it's translated drought in the King James into the drain it's actually a joke like the defilement you're worried about you flush it down the toilet but the defilement you should worry about is the heart now on the other hand when you read the Scrolls and the Thanksgiving hymns there is plenty of devotion of spirituality for example I'll quote you the prayer just the first lines of the prayer in the community rule before I move my hands and feet O Lord I praise you for your goodness things like that that's all the way through the Scrolls but on the other hand as far as strict interpretations of the Torah like if a commandment says this Howard do you interpret the way to keep that they're going to take the hard line if you remember the story of the two Pharisees Hillel and shamai shamai was strict and rigid and Hillel was kind of like Jesus you know pretty accommodating to human need the scroll whole group in the early Scrolls that we have they would make Hill look really liberal like Jesus and shama I think they would think you're kind of leaning that way you need to be a little more strict you can't go to the latrines or the toilet on the Sabbath why because a Sabbath Day's Journey is 2 000 cubits and you got to put the toilets 3 000 cubits outside the camp and you're not allowed to go outside the camp on the Sabbath so you gotta hold it you'll see if it mentions that by the way with admiration for their dedication he calls them his scenes well I think Jesus would have just you know Shrugged at that like come on but they're worried about ritual diphoma they're worried about touch not taste not handle not and so forth as many halachically observant Jews are today so it really depends on the world at your end and I would not want to characterize any Jew today who's highly observant of a strict Orthodox Judaism as having no heart no spirituality no joy because the ones I know do in fact have that but they also believe it should keep the Torah so I think that Jesus would have a more accommodating and open view he said things like the Sabbath is for people not people for the Sabbath so let that guide your interpretation I think the Dead Sea scroll group would have said what no the Sabbath for God not for us what are we we're mere worms you know looking to God well Jesus had a different idea so it sounds like if you want to find out why apologists are wrong about the Dead Sea Scrolls people should sign up for your new course well what you need to do is read the Scrolls everybody loves the Scrolls right oh the oldest things we've ever wow this is amazing and you say have you read I haven't had time to read them yet but you know it's kind of daunting here's the book we use it's 600 Pages we don't claim to cover all 600 but if I gave you a Bible and you've never heard of The Bible and I say why don't you study the Bible here and you don't know what comes first and who wrote what and what's the chronology and what's the history so you really do need a course or a teacher to take you through and that's what we do yeah I want people to read the Scrolls for yourself and you're going to get The Good the Bad and the Ugly and don't you get that in the Bible as well I mean you got lots of stuff where you think oh wait a minute really is that what it says and the skulls are the same way I mean I could give you examples on both sides but I would say yeah the good Scholars that are well informed about the Scrolls they don't want to over emphasize the parallels because it can sound like Jesus copied the teacher of righteousness but if I can list 25 things that the teacher taught and Jesus taught and no other Jewish group taught them there is something going on there and we shouldn't just ignore that and say oh well it's kind of the same but it was different yeah it was different but there's a matrix or a culture and particularly the idea of a community of the end of days a community that thinks they're going to live to see the end you behave differently all the way through if you think you're the last generation and they did if you're interested in signing up for Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls go to tinyurl.com taberdss that's t-a-b-o-r-d-s-s as in Dead Sea Scrolls and by doing so you'll get lifetime access to not only all 10 lectures but also so regular q a zoom calls for questions and discussion and you'll be helping this Channel and its Mission I want to make it as much like a college course as possible excellent thank you for your time Dr Tabor thank you very much and for more of this former Christian taking a look at the claims of Christians tap on the thumbnail on screen now and I'll see you over there as always to my amazing patrons whose support makes my work possible if you can join them please find the link in the description until next time later

Channel: Paulogia

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Length: 25min 52sec (1552 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 22 2023