Monday, May 15, 2017

Early misunderstandings of the Damascus Document

THE ANXIOUS BENCH: Alternative Scriptures: From Qumran to Christ. Philip Jenkins has dug up (heh) some early twentieth century scholarship on the Qumran sect. The sect was already known from the Cairo Geniza manuscript of the Damascus Document. Some quite reputable scholars were publishing unwarranted speculation about a direct Christian connection with the sect.

It goes to show how easy it is to take exciting new sources and draw inferences from them which go beyond the evidence. There has still been plenty of that after the discovery and publication of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Past posts in Professor Jenkins's series on "Alternative Scriptures" have been noted here and here.