**This class will be taught In-Person**
**This class will not meet on November 8th**
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The course will start with a brief survey of the controversies surrounding the Dead Sea Scrolls, their discovery, the dramatic scandals related to their non-publication, and their eventual publication.
Then we will survey the historical background to the lives and times of the Essenes, the people who most authorities believe were the authors of the scrolls, and review the millennial and end-of-days beliefs of these and other sectarian and schismatic Jewish groups in Judea at that time. We will read short selections of the most important and most controversial of the scrolls.
We will conclude with a survey of the controversies surrounding the messages of the scrolls and their impact upon our understanding of 2nd-Temple Messianic Judaism, early Christianity (the Jerusalem Church, aka the Primitive Church), their interface with the Nag Hamadi papyri, and post-Biblical-pre-Talmudic Judaism, at the turn of the millennium.
Week by Week Outline
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Jesus, James, Josephus, Jerusalem, and the Dead Sea Scrolls
1. Introduction
2. Epigraphy: Dead Sea Scrolls
3. Epigraphy: The Nag Hamadi Papyri & Gabriel Stone.
4. The most problematic texts, the problems they create, the problems they solve.
5. The Transition from Jesus to Christ
6. Summary & Conclusion
