history

[Elizabeth ll]

What were the people who wrote the dead sea scrolls trying to tell us, any ideas out there??? They obviously wanted us to know something. Do you think that christianity and Judaism were once the same??? I,m not religious just a historian.

[monkeyeyes]

Erm.......

What sort of historian, are you ?
Christ was a Jew who would have followed Jewish scripture and tradition.
It was those who came after who cobbled together a selection of stories and fables and created Christianity.
We are only be allowed a fraction of the information conatined in the Dead Sea Scrolls......................so it may be some while until we know what they were trying to tell us !

[Elizabeth ll]

Thankyou for your answer, I just started reading about the dead sea scrolls so you will have to pardon my ignorance on the subject. They mentioned in one book that I read how Christianity may have been born out of judaism, I just wondered if that were true, as I do not know everything.

[dot.hawkes]

I think there may have been a possibility it was.

[Elizabeth ll]

Thankyou dot, I,ll continue reading the book then, it,s pretty interesting, imagine finding something that old. They were written on animal skins and survived all that tyme. And now they have only fragments and they have to peice it all together. Fascinating.

[pingping]

check out the wikipedia page on them which is interesting. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_sea_scrolls
If you study early Christianity, then there are obvious links between Judaism and Christianity. Both include the Old Testament within their religious scripture, but they start to depart from each other over the issue of whether Jesus was the son of God. Christians believe that Jesus is the son of God, whereas Jews believe that he (or the Messiah) has yet to arrive. It is a really interesting subject to study.

[naomi24]

Since Jesus was a Jew, there's an obvious link between Judaism and Christianity, although the two religions are not, and never have been, the same. As monkeyeyes says, Jesus would have followed Jewish scripture and tradition. The people who came after him created Christianity -something I personally believe he never intended to happen.

As for the Dead Sea Scrolls, I believe we can learn a lot from them.

Why don't you ask your question again on R&S, under the Society and Culture section? The people there debate this sort of thing all the time - and if you're interested in learning, that's a good place to start.

[Peter Pedant]

Keep reading Elizabrth

I think there is no doubt that Christianity arose out of Judaism as Jesus kicked off at least as a Jew

The dead sea scrolls they agree are not proto Christian documents and so dont tell us much about early Christianity (in fact dont tell us anything about early christianity - even though there are some tantalising names in the documents - The Teacher for one)

and so of course this raises the question, of whom do the documents relate to ?
Huge literature on this, and everyone has axes to grind

Christianity 0-100 AD is an interesting subject
now read on !

[Whickerman]

head this into the Religion section as Naomi prompted - we're waiting for you...!

[jobplease]

Most religions are all very similar just with different names for their gods believing their religion is right. Judaism, Christianity both believe in the old testiment. I think Islam does aswell, there was conflict between them throughout the ages though just because of the minor details cause they were idiots.

[Elizabeth ll]

well I wouldn,t call them idiots....different beliefs you must remember were caused by the times in which they were created. I believe myself that at some point people needed a mesiah,someone who could lead them from the rich and powerful of those times and give them hope.....Jesus asked them to follow him and he gave them strength and some power and something to believe in. He asked that they trust him and follow his beliefs so that they could rise above all of the horrible things which were happening around them. I think this was true in most religions...I don,t believe that it is right however to use religion as an excuse to annialate others who do not have the same beliefs....