Dead Sea Scrolls And Mormonism — Part 1

Mormonism 101 is research ministries Bill McKeever and Eric Johnson has helped many more to understand what separates Mormonism from the Christian faith. Mormonism 101 is what your favorite Christian bookstore online@mrm.org .1 examines the teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints from a biblical perspective view .1 Mormonism is sponsored by Mormonism research ministry since 1979 Mormonism research ministry has been dedicated to equipping the body of Christ with answers regarding the Christian faith in a manner that expresses gentleness and respect.

And now, your host for today's viewpoint on Mormonism welcome to this edition of viewpoint on Mormonism on your host, Bill McKeever, founder director Mormonism research ministry with me today is Eric Johnson my colleague MRM last week we did a series looking at a book written by a lay member in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints of a man by the name of Charles Abbott. The book was titled immersion in Mormonism and as I mentioned last week, we don't often examine books written by lay members because as even Mormons would admit they don't carry a lot of authority when it comes to the rest of the LDS church but it's not bad sometimes to look at what some of these lay members are saying because it reflects what they personally believe and I think that's important. If we want to get a well-rounded understanding of the LDS people. Now if you listen last week show.

You probably realize very quickly that we were somewhat critical of some of the things that Charles Abbott was saying and I really had no intention of going any longer than five days on this particular series regarding that book. But as we got to the end of the block. We find that Charles Abbott seems to spend a considerable amount of ink trying to defend the Mormon faith by comparing unique understandings in Mormonism to what he thinks or found in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Now a lot of the research that he included was not original. He gets it from another man, a man by the name of Dennis K. Brown, Dennis K.

Brown was a temple president in the Denver area and as far as we know he really has no serious credentials regarding any type of study in the Dead Sea Scrolls. But what makes it I guess you could say somewhat bothersome for us is how when I can understand why Mormons want to gravitate towards just about anything in any body that might provide some sort of faith promoting material because it is not a lot out there for Mormons. So to see, for instance, in the lineage parallel between what is in the Dead Sea Scrolls and what Mormons are led to believe. I could see that would be very inviting to a latter-day St. But the question is, are there really parallels between the two. I looked at some of the things that Charles Abbott said and you looked at some of the things that Charles Abbott said we looked at each other and went a minute.

I remember that being mentioned by any scholar that I know of regarding the Dead Sea Scrolls. Where is Mr. Brown getting this information and why would Mr. Abbott think that Mr. Brown was telling something that was truthful and could be verified. So we want to take a few days here to look at that portion of Mr. Abbott's book and look at what he gleaned from Mr. Brown's book on this subject, and then compare what they are saying with the opinions and research of a genuine scholar, one of which that were going to cite quite readily would be Dr. Randall Price from Liberty University as well as Jody Magnus was a well-known archaeologist were really talking about a lot of information during this next week they'll and if anybody is really interested in this topic. We do have an article just like we wrote one on Charles Abbott's book.

This is going to be on our website MRM.org/Dead Sea Scrolls doctrine Dead Sea Scrolls doctrine has hyphens between each of those words and so if you're interested in what were talking about this week. I encourage you to go there because there's a lot more there. I think it's over 30 pages worth of material, but I think we need to talk a little bit about the Dead Sea Scrolls and the whole location of Qumran which is on the northwest side of the Dead Sea the very top there you and I have been there.

Bill a number of times, like I think I've been there eight or nine times since it's a great place to go and to understand more about the scrolls, but we know a lot about them. I mean as far as the first cave that was discovered was they say in 1947 by young Bedouin shepherds and then once it was discovered that there had been scrolls found in cave one they call it, including the great scroll of Isaiah then Bedouin shepherds started to go through the hills there. There's gold in them there hills is how I think the attitude was, and in so than the scholars realized that this was something important to do so. Between 1947 in 1954 there were 11 total caves that were found by both the bed and went in the archaeologist. The Bedouin found more think they found six and the archaeologist found five but we have most of those scrolls available to us, and today you have the opportunity to purchase a book that will have the translation in English from all of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

So this is not a mystery as to what these are about the most important scrolls. There were 930 found but the most important for Christianity would be the 230 scrolls of all of the books of the Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible, except for the book of Esther and so we have a record of all of the other books. What happened with the scrolls as they had been left behind because the Roman army had come in A.D. 68. When they were going after the Jewish people because of the revolt against Rome and destroyed Jerusalem. Later in 8070, but they left all their scrolls behind my theory is that many of them went to Masada in a few years later committed suicide with everybody else.

And the reason I think that is because these scrolls would've been valuable and yet nobody ever came to get them back until they were first discovered in 1947, so this was what William F. Albright called the greatest biblical discovery of all time and I don't think he's far off from that, because this really helped us to be able to look at those 230 scrolls, including the entire scroll of Isaiah and to compare that with the earliest text we had before then, which would have been from the 10th or 11th century called the Masoretic text and we bridge the gap by a thousand years, and what the scholars have determined is that the ad Dead Sea Scrolls predating by thousand years, and what the Masoretic text had there were very few differences in effect what differences there were usually grammatical and when there was any kind of a difference.

It usually helped us to better understand what the original Hebrew would've said rather than trying to have to guess if there were mistakes made from the master rates and so so I think these scrolls are huge for us as Christians, nine of the 11 caves had biblical text.

More than half of them were found as fragments and K for because they didn't put those in the jars that we see in cave one where the seven scrolls were actually put us for safekeeping will. Here's one thing for sure the Romans come in A.D. 68. So none of the scrolls could have been written after that.

Right now scholars say that probably the scrolls go up to what ED 50, but certainly you cannot say that any of these scrolls were written after A.D. 68. And I think that's important.

It shows that there very early. Some of the scrolls before even Jesus being born. Yeah. So if you're going to take the Mormon argument will we believe the Bible to be the word of God. As far as it's translated correctly and you're going to assume as Mormon leaders have tried to say that the transmission of the text was corrupted over the years, the Dead Sea Scrolls tend to put that argument away right would be difficult for a person to prove that statement is not that Mormons don't believe it because Mormons tend to believe whatever their leaders tell and whatever Joseph Smith said that's what they go with but the evidence doesn't seem to support it.

One thing the evidence also doesn't support it doesn't support that the people who were writing these scrolls that we have today believed in many areas like Mormons and of course Charles Abbott's going to try make that case and Dennis K. Brown tries to make that case. In his book that he wrote on that subject. So were going to be looking at some of the things that Abbott said because he listed what Eric five specific alleged proofs that show that the Dead Sea Scrolls confirmed Mormon doctrine, let's get a little more background to the scrolls. They date from 250 BC to A.D. 50 and they actually did not get released until the 1990s.

So if you would've talked about what were to talk about here in the show this week in 1980s. You would not be able to have the information we would not know, but there were political situations. They were finally released in the 1990s and the final publishing of the scrolls was in 2002.

Most of the scrolls are written in Hebrew. If you are done in Aramaic, and Greek, and the vast majority are written on animal skin which we call vellum or parchment. There were a few papyri and even one scroll was written on comparable talk a little more about that this week and we need to also say that most of the scrolls were found as fragments, very few of them were found in the jars and so the scholars have had a lot of work to do over the years as they put all of these pieces together to make an understanding of what it would have said, but this study has been going on for many many years, but we are privileged to be able to have the Internet and you can go read the scrolls yourself on the Internet or you can buy whole books and so there's no mystery as to what is found within the Dead Sea Scrolls that we should say to their credit that we are not aware of any current church leaders LDS church leaders. I'm not aware of any current LDS scholars that are pointing to the Dead Sea Scrolls and drawing the same conclusion that Dennis K. Brown and Charles Abbott have drawn and that's true, but there have been a number of people over the years and when this book secrets of the Dead Sea Scrolls that was written by Randall Price in 1996. This is what he said he actually deals with the specifically and he says many of today's cults in the New Age movement have drawn parallels between themselves and Coomer on doctrine and practice in order to his store size that belief that we should mention that Randall Price is the founder and president of a ministry called world of the Bible ministries. He is also a distinguished research Prof. at Liberty University and he directed the Center for Judaic studies from 2010 to 2016. Dr. Price is also the adjunct professor of apologetics at Veritas evangelical seminary in California and he's written several books on archaeology, but he's also written a book that we are going to be citing quite a bit in the series and that is the book titled secrets of the Dead Sea Scrolls know when you look at his academic accomplishments. Again, when you compare a guy like Dennis K. Brown in the Charles Abbott they don't come even close to the credentials that Randall Price has received his Masters degree from Dallas theological seminary in Old Testament and Semitic languages, and he received his doctorate from the University of Texas at Austin in Middle Eastern studies with a concentration in Jewish studies in biblical archaeology. I don't even have time to go through all of his accomplishments over the years. I want to add one more thing about Dr. Price. He actually discovered a cave in 2017. That is very much in line with the scrolls having been in there.

They were no longer there so they're not calling it cave 12 but it's a very important discovery and it made international news when he did that tomorrow were going to continue our look at some of the claims that these two Mormon writers have made for the Dead Sea Scrolls and Mormon doctrine, as well as some of the rebuttals that Dr. Randall Price has given regarding their alleged findings. Thank you for listening you would like to research ministry. We encourage you to visit our website www.mrm.org you can request a free newsletter research. We hope you join us again as we look at another viewpoint is you just listen to today's broadcast viewpoint on Mormonism. But did you know that you can hear previous shows at your convenience viewpoint and Mormon is a podcast is free on the Internet and will help you learn about the LDS religion.

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