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The Conditionalist Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 1 - Contents
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    CHAPTER FORTY-THREE: Dead Sea Scrolls-Permeated Throughout With Conditionalism

    The celebrated Dead Sea scrolls, retrieved from the silence of centuries in the now-famous caves of the cliffs and ravines near Khirbet Qumran, at the northern end of the Dead Sea, likewise have a definite bearing upon our quest. The Qumran scrolls comprise portions of numerous books of the Old Testament canon, together with a number of apocryphal and pseudepigraphical writings, commentaries, and special treatises.CFF1 741.1

    Some of these tightly rolled manuscripts—truly treasures of the wilderness—were found stored away in tall clay jars (at least those of Cave I) for safety. 1Finds in caves subsequent to Cave I were not stored in jars, but scattered—indicating the haste with which these other precious scrolls were secreted in caves, as contrasted with the care bestowed on the scrolls placed in Cave I. They were discovered in the first cave in 1947 by a Bedouin shepherd lad looking for his goats (with subsequent recoveries and excavations in ten other nearby caves). Their genuineness and antiquity have now been acknowledged with virtual unanimity by the world’s great archeologists. 2Based on T. H. Gaster, The Dead Sea Scriptures; F. M Cross, The Scrolls From the Judaean Desert, The Ancient Library at Qumran and Modern Biblical Studies; F. F. Bruce, Second Thoughts on the Dead Sea Scrolls; H. H. Rowley, The Covenanters of Damascus and the Dead Sea Scrolls; Millar Burrows, The Dead Sea Scrolls, and More Light on the Dead Sea Scrolls; and other book and periodical sources. These scrolls comprise a series of finds without precedent.CFF1 741.2

    With the exploration of these additional caves it became apparent that this collection of scrolls had been the treasured central library of the community’s headquarters, which has since been excavated. Archeological evidence, consisting of scroll wrappings, coins, 3A convincing summary of coin findings, made by Dr. Leona Running of the faculty of Andrews University, drawn from Pere de Vaux’s reports in Revue Biblique, covering the five excavations, shows that the coins are dated from the time of Antiochus VI (in 136 B.C.), on into the Cristian Era. They bear the imprint of a score of monarchs, the last being Agrippa II (C. A.D. 86). and pottery, 4Pottery found in the caves and the Khirbet, and in the earth fill of the tombs, ties these evidences all together, under the dating furnished by the coins, and within the period indicated by the radio-carbon test of the linen. clearly of the second and first centuries B.C. and the first century A.D., all helped to determine the dating. The radio-carbon test, applied to the decomposed cloth in which the scrolls were bound, likewise contributed to reducing a probability of dating. 5The total evidence has thus enabled the paleographers and archeologists to date the Qumran manuscripts “within the interval of a half century.” See Cross, op. cit., p. xii. Thus the earlier battle of the scrolls has been largely resolved. (For chronological placement and category of the scrolls see Tabular Chart D, page 658.)CFF1 741.3

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