Similarities Between The Dead Sea Scrolls And The Bible

The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Bible share many common elements amongst their narratives, but certain elements of these narratives such as the change of pace in characters, narratives, morals, and the general concept of the contexts make the two collections contradictory to one another. In addition, the narratives change pace through different events, results of different stories, different points of view, and through details that are or may not be mentioned when comparing the two collections. Through this, the main focus in these stories become different. This leads insight into the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Bible’s authors’ main goals or positions on the narratives they are telling. The authors in the Dead Sea Scrolls tend to focus on the human’s …show more content…
Because of this, the stories and narratives that scholars can compare are relatively different. For example, in the Tales of Patriarch, there is a passage that is very similar to Exodus 24:4-6 and Exodus 3:12 (Wise, Abegg, Cook, pg. 89-107). The basic narrative that both versions tell is God’s covenant bringing the people out of Egypt. Moses builds an altar and creates a burnt offering to the Lord. With some minor additional details, this sums up the Dead Sea Scrolls version. However, in Exodus, the narrative is broken up in different parts. Because it is broken up, a different story is told and the parts in between are focused on God and Moses together and while in the Dead Sea Scrolls this is also true, the scroll focuses more on Moses’ actions rather than God’s feelings and sensations about the sacrifice on the altar or further commentary on Moses’ actions. Another that is similar to this is when God tells Noah not to consume blood (Coogan, David, Zvi, Newsom, Perkins, pg. 22). This section in Genesis of the Bible focuses on the offerings to God and why Noah should obey his command. There are several verses of God speaking to Noah telling him what is to become of him and his descendants. Although Tales of Patriarch tells this story as well, the author decides to focus more on what Noah does afterwards, such as going to the mountain Ararat (Wise, Abegg, Cook, pg. 95). In Commentaries of Habakkuk, the author takes specific passages from Habakkuk in the Bible and makes comments on them; Most of these chosen passages are twisted by the author, as the author explains that certain comments refer to these humans or actions of humans and doesn’t comment as many passages and refer them to God. The Charter of a Jewish Sectarian Association is a guideline, including laws for the Yahad as well, for the people to follow. Although