First of all, since when is UC San Diego a top research university? Second of all, wtf are they doing with a picture of Harvard (Widener library) on this article when Harvard has nothing at all to do with this? Insinuating that this survey, "research", has anything to do with Harvard is an asshat move. Harvard goes to such crazy extremes to combat cheating that it's unreal.
I remember when the iPhone 4 came out and there was news coverage everywhere of huge lines, preorders selling out in minutes, etc. Two or three weeks after it was launched I needed to get a phone, so I walked into a Radioshack in the busiest intersection in Cambridge, MA, asked for an iPhone 4, and walked out with one 20 minutes later. Maybe I was lucky?
People that keep talking about them as if they are a menace have probably never read any of them, and are probably looking for reasons to discount Christianity specifically, or theism generally. That's my hunch.
About the Jesus coming from Qumran thing. Jesus was from Galilee, born and raised. It is possible that he and or John the Baptist had run-ins with the Essenes (the group that we generally equate with those living in Qumran) at some point, either because there were Essenes in Galilee, or because John's itinerancy was in the Judaean wilderness after all, the same place as Qumran. To make things short, the message of Jesus and John were quite contrary to the teaching we find in the DSS.
In the future, as a good litmus test for these theories. Observe if the person saying them has a PhD, where they got it from, and what the PhD is in. There are all kinds of conspirators that have published outside the scholarly circles, with no peer review. They will either not have a PhD, have a PhD from some obscure Bible college, or have a PhD in something completely unrelated like geology or math.
Helmut Koester, a professor here at Harvard that has been teaching since the 1950's, and one of my advisors, has published one of the standards in the field with his introduction to Early Christianity: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/3110149702
It is really unfair how good a scholar he is. He has been doing it so long he has essentially amassed the combined knowledge of two scholarly lifetimes, and it shows in his work. As far as Christianity in the East, that is East of the Roman Empire--this is the next boom in the field of Ancient Christian studies because it has not been explored that much. It's unfortunately quite difficult to give you the name of a scholarly monograph on the topic, but authors you might look out for are Adam Becker and Charles Stang. They both specialize in Ancient Christianity of the East. If you have access to an academic library or online journals the Syriac/Syrian Christian tradition and the Manichean tradition are probably what you will find the most fruitful in attempting to make any connections with Buddhism (though I wouldn't have high hopes for anything that accomplishes this). Syrian Orthodoxy is still around in India today as a matter of fact.
It is actually rather remarkable how well everyone worked together to keep them out of private collections. Again, when they were found they were in Jordan's territory and the Israel Independence War and the tension following it could have made sure all of this stuff was scattered in collections to the highest bidder. Some of the fragments were sold before people realized how immensely important they were (the family that found the first ones was burning them for kindling). Most of the ones that are in private collections have been purchased by universities like Princeton Theological Seminary in order to get them released.
there is only one on metal, the Copper Scroll (3Q15). This is actually the scroll I published on.
There are a few on parchment but mostly papyri.
There was nothing on pottery or stone, but other stuff like this, called ostraca epigraphy, until the DSS was about all we had from the time in Judaea save a few papyri like PNash.
The Aramaic is pretty similar to the Hebrew. It's not the languages that make them difficult for the people that know modern Hebrew and or Aramaic/Syriac, the problem with most of them is that, like he said, images of the scrolls themselves will not give you a nice clear text to read. It will be faint, smudged, tiny, swiss cheese papyri, often with no context, in an unfamiliar orthography. This is why scholars use the published version of the transcribed texts in the DJD, Wise, et. all., Martinez, et. all, etc, and never bother to look at the actual scroll itself unless they really have a reason to.
I'm studying ancient Christianity and Judaism at Harvard, have published on one of the Dead Sea Scrolls and work with them regularly (I'm procrastinating on translating a bunch of fragments for my homework right now actually).
It's taken this long partly for bureaucratic reasons, but mostly because there are thousands of fragments that are basically shredded wheat that had to be put back together, reconstructed, translated, categorized, edited, and published. This was also around the time the State of Israel, and the cluster**** that was caused a lot of delays and red tape.They have not been kept secret, they have been steadily published in the DJD series (Discoveries in the Judaean Desert) for the last 50 years as this tremendous task has been accomplished. As someone said above, yes people were not very careful with them by today's standards, people smoked around them, drank coffee, and used the handiest invention that had just come out-"scotch tape"- to piece them together. All that said, with the exception of fragments in private collections, the last of the Dead Sea Scrolls were published in the early 90's.
This is not publishing anything new, or secret. It is being scanned and put online for the public, who doesn't have a clue what to do with them, can look at them. Scholars have known how to look at them, in the DJD, and in a half a dozen other widely available publications that have been around for decades.
Facts the dilettantes have said in these comments that have made me [face_palm]: The Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS hereafter) were composed in Qumran, not Jerusalem. (some of the stuff is clearly copies of other documents that circulated elsewhere however) The Qumran community responsible for the scrolls existed between the 2nd century BCE and ca 70CE during the Roman war. There is nothing in the DSS about Jesus because they probably never heard of him, they probably lived a monastic style life and kept to themselves. There are, however, certain strong affinities between things we find in the DSS and the New Testament, including the method of scripture interpretation, some apocalyptic ideas, as well as some apparently common expressions like that found in 4Q521 and Acts. There is nothing damaging or threatening to the modern religions of Judaism and Christianity. To be sure, the DSS are of tremendous importance for contextualizing their origin and telling us what life was like back then, but this is not a conspiracy to keep them hidden.
Anyone that has any questions please feel free to ask me, and stop giving those asshats up there 5 points for 'information'
practically, there's not much difference between an iphone, an ipad, and a low end pc apart from the screen size. whoever can make this work practically to will have the one technology to rule them all.
I happened to be in Palestine this past week when the protests happened and have lived there in the past. Because people were saying, upon their entry interview, that they were coming to protest human rights offenses, they were expecting Israel to turn them right around. I don't know the percentages of course, but there was a very sizable group of foreigners (a couple hundred I would guess), that seemed to make it in and do their protests. As someone with tons of Palestinian contacts, and who travels to Israel (and the occupied territories) frequently, I make a habit of disabling any social media for crossing airport security.
*awaits slashdot to give up my personal date to Israel in order to blacklist me*
Slashdot Mirror
$20 says this poster is a woman
Burn the windmills.
my faster time is 39 seconds, can anyone beat it?
As a member of the PPDCP (purple polka dot clowns party) I find this post highly offensive.
First of all, since when is UC San Diego a top research university?
Second of all, wtf are they doing with a picture of Harvard (Widener library) on this article when Harvard has nothing at all to do with this? Insinuating that this survey, "research", has anything to do with Harvard is an asshat move. Harvard goes to such crazy extremes to combat cheating that it's unreal.
because they aren't fun majors. duh.
F science, I want to be a sculptor.
This will require him to play a Wii
a slightly slower, yet far more terrifying rubix cube bot can be seen here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaRcWB3jwMo&feature=player_embedded
I remember when the iPhone 4 came out and there was news coverage everywhere of huge lines, preorders selling out in minutes, etc. Two or three weeks after it was launched I needed to get a phone, so I walked into a Radioshack in the busiest intersection in Cambridge, MA, asked for an iPhone 4, and walked out with one 20 minutes later. Maybe I was lucky?
Telling you what the most important things they have to say is basically like trying to tell you what the most important thing a 2,000 year old library has to say. This book, by one of the most accomplished DSS scholars is worth getting if you are really curious:
http://www.amazon.com/Dead-Sea-Scrolls-Today-rev/dp/080286435X/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1317177844&sr=1-2
People that keep talking about them as if they are a menace have probably never read any of them, and are probably looking for reasons to discount Christianity specifically, or theism generally. That's my hunch.
About the Jesus coming from Qumran thing. Jesus was from Galilee, born and raised. It is possible that he and or John the Baptist had run-ins with the Essenes (the group that we generally equate with those living in Qumran) at some point, either because there were Essenes in Galilee, or because John's itinerancy was in the Judaean wilderness after all, the same place as Qumran. To make things short, the message of Jesus and John were quite contrary to the teaching we find in the DSS.
In the future, as a good litmus test for these theories. Observe if the person saying them has a PhD, where they got it from, and what the PhD is in. There are all kinds of conspirators that have published outside the scholarly circles, with no peer review. They will either not have a PhD, have a PhD from some obscure Bible college, or have a PhD in something completely unrelated like geology or math.
Helmut Koester, a professor here at Harvard that has been teaching since the 1950's, and one of my advisors, has published one of the standards in the field with his introduction to Early Christianity: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/3110149702
It is really unfair how good a scholar he is. He has been doing it so long he has essentially amassed the combined knowledge of two scholarly lifetimes, and it shows in his work. As far as Christianity in the East, that is East of the Roman Empire--this is the next boom in the field of Ancient Christian studies because it has not been explored that much. It's unfortunately quite difficult to give you the name of a scholarly monograph on the topic, but authors you might look out for are Adam Becker and Charles Stang. They both specialize in Ancient Christianity of the East. If you have access to an academic library or online journals the Syriac/Syrian Christian tradition and the Manichean tradition are probably what you will find the most fruitful in attempting to make any connections with Buddhism (though I wouldn't have high hopes for anything that accomplishes this). Syrian Orthodoxy is still around in India today as a matter of fact.
It is actually rather remarkable how well everyone worked together to keep them out of private collections. Again, when they were found they were in Jordan's territory and the Israel Independence War and the tension following it could have made sure all of this stuff was scattered in collections to the highest bidder. Some of the fragments were sold before people realized how immensely important they were (the family that found the first ones was burning them for kindling). Most of the ones that are in private collections have been purchased by universities like Princeton Theological Seminary in order to get them released.
there is only one on metal, the Copper Scroll (3Q15). This is actually the scroll I published on.
There are a few on parchment but mostly papyri.
There was nothing on pottery or stone, but other stuff like this, called ostraca epigraphy, until the DSS was about all we had from the time in Judaea save a few papyri like PNash.
The Aramaic is pretty similar to the Hebrew. It's not the languages that make them difficult for the people that know modern Hebrew and or Aramaic/Syriac, the problem with most of them is that, like he said, images of the scrolls themselves will not give you a nice clear text to read. It will be faint, smudged, tiny, swiss cheese papyri, often with no context, in an unfamiliar orthography. This is why scholars use the published version of the transcribed texts in the DJD, Wise, et. all., Martinez, et. all, etc, and never bother to look at the actual scroll itself unless they really have a reason to.
I'm studying ancient Christianity and Judaism at Harvard, have published on one of the Dead Sea Scrolls and work with them regularly (I'm procrastinating on translating a bunch of fragments for my homework right now actually).
It's taken this long partly for bureaucratic reasons, but mostly because there are thousands of fragments that are basically shredded wheat that had to be put back together, reconstructed, translated, categorized, edited, and published. This was also around the time the State of Israel, and the cluster**** that was caused a lot of delays and red tape.They have not been kept secret, they have been steadily published in the DJD series (Discoveries in the Judaean Desert) for the last 50 years as this tremendous task has been accomplished. As someone said above, yes people were not very careful with them by today's standards, people smoked around them, drank coffee, and used the handiest invention that had just come out-"scotch tape"- to piece them together. All that said, with the exception of fragments in private collections, the last of the Dead Sea Scrolls were published in the early 90's.
This is not publishing anything new, or secret. It is being scanned and put online for the public, who doesn't have a clue what to do with them, can look at them. Scholars have known how to look at them, in the DJD, and in a half a dozen other widely available publications that have been around for decades.
Facts the dilettantes have said in these comments that have made me [face_palm]:
The Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS hereafter) were composed in Qumran, not Jerusalem. (some of the stuff is clearly copies of other documents that circulated elsewhere however)
The Qumran community responsible for the scrolls existed between the 2nd century BCE and ca 70CE during the Roman war.
There is nothing in the DSS about Jesus because they probably never heard of him, they probably lived a monastic style life and kept to themselves.
There are, however, certain strong affinities between things we find in the DSS and the New Testament, including the method of scripture interpretation, some apocalyptic ideas, as well as some apparently common expressions like that found in 4Q521 and Acts.
There is nothing damaging or threatening to the modern religions of Judaism and Christianity. To be sure, the DSS are of tremendous importance for contextualizing their origin and telling us what life was like back then, but this is not a conspiracy to keep them hidden.
Anyone that has any questions please feel free to ask me, and stop giving those asshats up there 5 points for 'information'
I don't want anyone to know I read slashdot
What is 100 years old? The Aborigine? the hair sample?
The scientists were given a DNA genomic sequence from a 100-year-old...?
hmm, in that case. i don't suppose there's a firefox extension that does the same thing?
that has a "like" button regardless of if I click it or not?
practically, there's not much difference between an iphone, an ipad, and a low end pc apart from the screen size. whoever can make this work practically to will have the one technology to rule them all.
what the hell are contrivances?*
besides 19 points
or it didn't happen
Cloud on cloud violence like this cannot be tolerated!
The most linear, uncreative, rehash that relied solely on graphics appeal...pretty much typifies the problem.
I happened to be in Palestine this past week when the protests happened and have lived there in the past. Because people were saying, upon their entry interview, that they were coming to protest human rights offenses, they were expecting Israel to turn them right around. I don't know the percentages of course, but there was a very sizable group of foreigners (a couple hundred I would guess), that seemed to make it in and do their protests. As someone with tons of Palestinian contacts, and who travels to Israel (and the occupied territories) frequently, I make a habit of disabling any social media for crossing airport security.
*awaits slashdot to give up my personal date to Israel in order to blacklist me*