Episode 8 | Qumran and the Church | Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls

[Music] we all know this but the moon in and of itself gives off no light if there was no sun we wouldn't be able to see the moon recently i was walking to my office and the moon was rising over the horizon it was just beautiful it was big it was colorful and it was light this is an image that we often think of related to our lady as well we see our blessed mother as beautiful and humble and glorious but that is because she reflects the light of her son apart from her son she doesn't have that beauty it's my story as well it's your story as well anything that we've done that is good that is righteous that it's holy that it's beautiful it's only because the grace of god is working in our life apart from him we can give off no light god god's light illuminates things that on their own just aren't that impressive but as light illuminates things in objects like a moon or a young woman in nazareth or a scroll and this light illuminates and helps us to see beautiful things that otherwise we might have missed [Music] [Music] [Music] welcome to jesus and the dead sea scrolls i'm father dave pavanka president of franciscan university of steunville and i'm joined with dr john bergsma theology professor here at franciscan university and also author of the book jesus and the dead sea scrolls this is our last episode it is i'm so glad we've had this time together it's been good it's before your time isn't it it is thank you very much i knew where i should have cut that part okay so uh as wonderful as the dead sea scrolls are and how much they've given us insight they're not the end-all like there there's actually some some things that they in conflict so what are some of the differences that that that we understand it's the early church what jesus was saying just talk about some of those yeah so we've emphasized so many similarities that people might get the idea that oh the essenes were just like proto-christians or something like that but there are some pretty serious differences i mean the biggest thing obviously is the identity of the messiah like i said their mainstream view was going to get two messiahs but maybe melchizedek don't know about that but they didn't identify and jesus of nazareth comes and that is our core belief he was uh the son of god he was the messiah that was expected can i ask you a speculation why why didn't they notice what yeah well i think that's i think that many did okay i think that many did i think that uh our lord won a lot of converts from from the essie movement that people looked at him and they said look he's freeing people from satan he's forgiving people their sins these other miracles as well is this not what we expected the the melchizedekian messiah to do okay so i think that several of the disciples were probably had backgrounds in essenism and converted but i think that you know those in power as is all usually the case you know like those control institutions are like no you know if we go over to him it's always been this way yeah exactly we're gonna lose our institutional identity so i think that that uh you know obviously um as a group they didn't go over but many individuals did so i mean that's a big deal you know the identity of jesus as a messiah um they did not anticipate the messiah being the son of god that's really a revelation you know that comes to us through christ uh we mentioned earlier they didn't imagine the messiah feeding they had this they saw the sacred meal coming didn't see the sacrament give me the flesh the messiah how about how about the suffering i mean you take a look at isaiah it speaks of a suffering servant they weren't able to make that step not for their for the messiah but it's so beautiful they did understand that god was calling them to suffer okay and and i'm really touched when you read their devotional literature uh like the um some of the some of the hymns and prayers that their leader wrote their leader is just known in the scrolls as the teacher of righteousness many people think he was an ex-high priest that was kicked out of jerusalem and then founded or refounded the community down there at qumran but his prayers are just beautiful and he had this keen sense that those who would follow god in this present dark age were going to be called to suffering okay and that god was going to purify them through that and and i'm just touched by that and that remains perennially true it's just it's always true that god purifies us through suffering so i think that people that were raised with that would would make that connection and and even this this um teacher of righteousness that founded the monastery he saw his personal suffering as helping in the the redemption of this community that was you know and i think that those raised with that would look upon jesus and and then be prepared to understand the cross better you know okay so they didn't see jesus as messiah it didn't seem the son of god other differences like was there something that jesus said that just would have bugged them it's like oh yeah there were a couple of big ones uh so you know like in in mark 7 when our lord says look it's not what goes into a man that defiles him but what comes out of a man that defiles him they were like no water that was the water thing you shared the other day exactly yeah they're like no you can definitely be defiled by what goes into you you know if you're not pouring liquids properly and if you're eating grain grown by gentiles this is going to make you you know impure you know so they would have been upset with that uh for sure um uh you know other other teachings of our lord uh like uh threshing out the grain on the sabbath as we see in matthew 12 they would have been offended by that as well when our lord for example tells the crowds would you not lift your animal out of a pit on the sabbath day they would have said no no actually no leave the animal wouldn't you do that they have a explicit line uh in in one of their documents saying no not even if your animal falls into a fit you bring them out so there's they they were sticklers for these ceremonial observances that moses gave the people of israel and would have had great difficulty with our lord's teaching that that there are deeper things of the law mercy and justice and righteousness and so on so there were things that were dissimilar would there be some concern about all the things that were so similar was there anything that just undermined christianity or oh my goodness we we we just let's not pay attention to that particular thing anything yeah that's definitely an argument that's been made uh going all the way back to the 19th century and then uh more recently when the scrolls were discovered there was a series of articles in the new york times back in the 50s i believe it was that a certain editorialist kept pounding this idea that oh christianity is a sham it just got everything from the essenes and so on so uh yeah definitely people have tried to use the scrolls to say christianity is not original and they just copied a bunch of stuff etc but that's not how we need to look at it and that's definitely not how i look at it either you know go back to something that we said i think it was in the first episode you know foundational to our faith is the idea that the gospel is the fulfillment of the prophets we say that in the creed that the holy spirit spoke through the prophets and so we've never viewed jesus as you know bringing something completely novel that was not anticipated we've always said no god spoke through the prophets of old and jesus fulfills that now if that's true if the prophets really spoke of what was to come we would expect that those that devoted themselves to prayer holiness and the study of the prophets would have seen yeah how things were going to go and that's a that's precisely you know these were holy men they were seeking after god did they have their mistakes did they have their you know their chauvinism and some pride and stuff like that yeah they had that as well but all in all they were seeking after god meditating on scriptures and i think god gave them insight through the holy spirit that enabled themselves them to to form themselves into an image of what indeed the messiah was going to form and by your your title revealing the jewish roots in of christianity we don't have to walk away from that you know the the scene community was a jewish community and we have some of our roots we don't have to totally separate ourselves from that no no we're always joined you know the the our lord and the blessed mother and the apostles are all you know jews to the core um and you know as uh john john xxiii used to say we're all spiritually semites i mean we take jesus's blood into us that's the blood of a jew you know so we we have jewish blood in our veins a friend of mine she's a a nun and she did that the ancestry test or something like that and it came back that she was one percent jewish and she goes father do you know why i'm one percent jewish i said no i don't it's because i take eucharist every day how do you argue with that right but i think that that's really important is that is it it helps us the more you know we understand where we came from we can understand more clearly who we are today and it helped form us and i think that the scene community does that really really beautifully um any other differences major differences between the dead sea scrolls and the early writings i think that we've hit on okay yeah so what happened to the community yeah that's always a good question yeah we find a destruction layer at the monastery with roman arrowheads and such and it seems apparent that around the time that the that the romans destroyed jerusalem in the year 70 they also must have sent a detachment of soldiers down to the dead sea to wipe out this little group of monks lest they pose a threat um they didn't pose much of a threat you know uh they weren't said earlier that they were pacifists so that they weren't gonna fight yeah yeah uh but nonetheless that that was the demise of the community we think that they hid their scrolls um up in the caves having a sense that they were going to get attacked but that was providential and it preserved them for posterity just that image of them coming in and wrapping everything up and figuring that they'll they'll be found a year or two from now and what's 1945 years right later yeah and but what a you know leaving something to the future generations what what an amazing gift that they offered to us they really did yeah so when when you think about finally that the community and the offerings of the dead sea scrolls can you say the greatest thing that they offer can you in one sense the the most important thing that we need to take about from the essene community from the dead sea scrolls what is it that yeah i think it gives us i would say if i had to summarize it would be confidence in scripture uh in many different ways we talked about how you know this this great isaiah scroll so much older than anything we found and yet the text is not substantially different than what we had this this faithfulness of the copying of scriptures through the centuries that gives us a lot of confidence the fact that um the scrolls verify or give background for little details in the gospels things like you know i think we talked about this uh you and i um in in mark 14 we have this man this young man wearing nothing but a linen garment who runs away from the garden of gethsemane naked like what is that all about well he was an essene because they that's how they dressed they only wore a single linen garment uh it was kind of a form of poverty living uh living a kind of an asceticism so you know without this the scrolls you wouldn't understand the cultural significance of that that little scene and that the fact that these little details are verified or at least provided with a cultural background through the scrolls really help us to have confidence that you know the gospels are written when they say they are written they were written in the lifetime of jesus and the apostles they really reflect the culture of the times they're not late fictions yeah they're they're vibrant they just breathe and we talked about this too the way that phrases from the scrolls crop up in the gospel of john this is the language of the times it just adds adds color vibrancy and and life to to our reading of scripture and it would make sense we do that all the time we use catchphrases that we see in the media and so they're they're using a common language and we see it i i the fact that i love the fact that you said that there's just a confidence you know that we believe in the word of god and what the lord says is true and we can build our life on that we can be confident in that and the fact that the scrolls i can only imagine every now and then as they're opening up a new one it's like all right what does this one say and it just continued to reveal to us what we believe is true so that's great so just stay with us we've got a couple of thoughts as we end up this series so john the title of your book the first word jesus yep um i know when i first read the book that's what struck me more than i honestly didn't expect to read the book and have yeah an encounter with the lord and and understand him and see him used i think actually on the very first episode the idea of a window and it gives us the scene community and the dead sea scrolls give us a window into that in and allowing us to be able to see jesus and i think it's one of the beautiful things that you did here is is that it helps it puts the focus right so a danger would be that the focus merely beyond the scrolls it's like this is interesting we're on the essene community and obviously we talked a lot about that but so as to be able to help us understand this reality first yes absolutely i think the scrolls help us to understand the mystery of the incarnation that jesus the eternal son of god nonetheless humbled himself to become a man a jewish man a jewish man of the first century rubbing shoulders with real human beings that had religious concerns political concerns economic concerns just like we have today and that we read this the scrolls we see all this flurry of opinions and uh concerns and issues that was going on in jewish life and then we look in the gospels and see jesus is responding specifically to those things meeting us where we're at speaking to the people of his time but not just to the people of his time you know also giving you know eternal principles would ultimately not just a principles either but internal person himself who's eternally relevant that's when when i think of jesus uh and it's a very franciscan theme but one of the principles is this idea of an incarnational spirituality that that we discover we encounter lord in the things of the earth and the stuff and you and i right we can mediate grace to each other and and and one of the things that just became more clear is that and this isn't something we should shy away from but that jesus was a man of his time that as you just said all of these different elements he was engaging them and he was speaking to this group in that group and and for the franciscan i love the the image of saint francis and he's looking over the umbrian valley and he said the world is going to be my cloister now some people are called to live a life like the essene community or like the the trappist community that's going to cloister themselves but the franciscan is not called to that you know my way of life is is that work we have to be out there and all the things you just talked about and rubbing elbows with with the people in in business and working and teaching in hospitals and in ministry all of those things we need to be involved in the midst of that and this helps us or help me understand jesus and how he was doing that he sanctifies that yeah yeah i followed the spirituality of saint jose maria and he said something similar somebody wanted to ask him what's your your favorite place to pray where's your favorite sanctuary and he said the street yeah yeah yeah you know out there praying in the midst of the world and sanctifying the ordinary things of of uh daily life um and we see our lord doing that and that's a model for uh for most of us right so this your goal in your desire was to to help us to encounter jesus and and the role that the the dead sea scrolls allowed us was there anything else that an insight from the early church fathers that that really kind of animated this for you sure um you know i think i think several of the early church fathers were probably influenced by a seenism in a providential way i think they were right on you know 18 of 20 points you know in terms of and so those that that were raised in the movement were were primed to step right into roles of leadership within the church because once you understand okay i'm expecting the messiah it's jesus and and he has brought the great jubilee of freedom from satan and freedom from sin um and you have this idea of a body a salvific body that's structured and so on so i think like ignatius of antioch a very dear saint to me because his his seven letters to the churches of asia minor were influential my own conversion to catholicism especially his testimony to the real presence he has a line where he says basically avoid those who refuse to confess the eucharist to be the flesh of our savior jesus christ and i was one who denied that you know it really touched me across the centuries but when you read the letters of saint ignatius his view of the church is very much like the essene community had their views of their own yahada their their sacred body and uh some speculate that saint ignatius had had some background in essenism i think that some of the apostles did we mentioned john the apostle in john chapter 1 nathanael comes to our lord and our lord says here is an israelite and whom is no guile that's subtle but that would resonate very much with essene sensibilities because they never call themselves jews they only call themselves israelites and there is an important distinction there and they also placed a great uh emphasis on being sincere and having no disingenuousness you know so i think that nathaniel was was likely a jew with a background in the essene movement and so these these men were prepared to take on roles in the church and i think that was part of the way that god was working in those days it just reminds me that the lord uses all of this that he takes all that was going on and and brings it in for his purposes and that's as i guess maybe a parting shot is what i was thinking about that all of these different elements it wasn't a surprise you know you just see the lord putting the pieces and the players and the people together and you all the ones we've talked about they're all our heroes right you know paul uh john the baptist you mentioned some of the church fathers but also our lady that that the dead sea scrolls say something about our ladies indeed yeah we can close with that i mean there's there's long been speculation the church you know the the curious things that our lady says in at the annunciation you know she says i do you know how can this be since i do not know a man and uh you know i think well you're about to be married you know so you know these kind of things what does it mean um many have speculated does that mean she took a vow of celibacy um if so that would put her in a kind of an essence camp because that was the only branch of judaism that practiced that kind of thing and so there's been a lot of speculation about this and uh also even even recently within this past year there's been some archaeological studies of nazareth that showed that they they seemed to interpret the law in an essence way and that maybe the movement was strong there in nazareth okay yeah in these early chapters of luke 2 luke 1 and 2 as i mentioned in the book they're full of things that are curiously seeing like the fact that our lady and zachariah they burst out in song and they sing these psalm-like prayers these canticles right the essence were the only ones that continued that psalm tradition and continued to make new psalms as it were so it seems like there is some influence on the holy family there and maybe they were sympathetic to the movement that that's really in in what i go back to with the end is this uh john the baptist right prepare the way i think we actually started the first episode that but you see all of these individuals again our lady joseph john the baptist paul john all of these people that the lord has in this place to prepare the way and and i think that's what what the scene community and what i kind of take away from this is that the yeah the lord this wasn't a surprise to him right yeah the lord had this together he had this in place to help prepare the way for his coming indeed yeah and if you look at the community i mean we we mentioned that they're probably you know massacred by romans in the year 70 and okay so they were a flop they were a failure they went out in the desert they thought the messiah was going to parade by and they were going to have this triumphal entry up into jerusalem it didn't happen that way so they were just a failure were they below i think unwittingly they did in fact fulfill their mission exactly what they're supposed to do yeah they went out in sincerity to fulfill isaiah 40 verse 3. we're going to go out and we're going to prepare the way of the lord in the wilderness and they did they they ended up unwittingly forming many of the apostles for the church having an influence on the early church getting people in a state of spiritual preparation helping in the formation of john the baptist even if they had some differences with him eventually but they were instrumental in really you know educating john and and in a way that they didn't expect they succeeded beyond their wireless training here we are talking about it and there we are you know and that testifies to me because you know so many of the saints were glorious failures and i often tell that to my students i said look guys you may flop in what you think you're doing but you know do it for the lord and you'll succeed in ways that you didn't anticipate the essenes did and and that's that's what i think many of us are called to do we're not going to see everything physically materialized that we envision but but if we follow the lord and faithfulness we're going to find success that's only going to be seen maybe in heaven when we look back yeah yeah but i think that's the the mission the lord has given each one of us to to look for him to seek him to prepare a way for him to prepare ourselves for him to constantly being able to see where he is and then bring other people into that so uh that mission continues indeed amen so john i want to thank you so much for taking the time and just walking us through this uh your book is beautiful and the amount of work and effort that went into this just thank you thank you for sharing your mind thank you for sharing your heart with us it's just been a great blessing i encourage everybody to grab this book jesus and the dead sea scrolls uh some of the things we've talked about but much much more and it's just a beautiful book and and finally it's a book about jesus and that's that's what my life wants to be about is just about jesus so it helps us discover jesus so with that being said why don't we pray in the name of the father the son the holy spirit heavenly father we ask that your holy spirit would come to us lord that you'd give us the grace that our hearts would be turned towards jesus that we would encounter you we would discover you we would love you we would be loved by you our lives would be formed more and more into your image may the sanctifying spirit make us holy draw us into a deeper relationship with christ our lord jesus ask your blessing and your grace to be upon all those who are viewing this series that they would know your peace know your presence and know the love of christ which surpasses all knowledge and may lord part of his blessings on you the father the son and the holy spirit amen [Music] amen [Music] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Franciscan University of Steubenville

Views: 7,028

Rating: 4.948276 out of 5

Keywords: Franciscan University, Steubenville, Ohio, Catholic, college, Franciscan University of Steubenville, Franciscan University of Steubenville (College / University), Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls, Fr. Dave Pivonka TOR, Dr. John Bergsma, Dead Sea Scrolls

Id: qoKuSG75gLM

Length: 26min 14sec (1574 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 30 2020