The Conditionalist Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 1

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. ¹ 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. ² 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, ³ and pottery, ⁴ 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. ⁵ 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