Dead Sea Scrolls

[Wyrd of Gawd]

You're right, of course.  Someone managed to lay their hands on a load of 2200 year old parchment, made their own ink out of soot, honey, water and vinegar, carefully constructed authentic-seeming reed styli, went to all the trouble of learning ancient Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic, loaded the scrolls into a lot of clay jars (also 2200 years old), scattered some contemporaneous bronze coins about, and then managed to have a couple of semi-literate Bedouin shepherds 'discover' the scrolls in the 1940s.

I don't know how I could have been gullible enough to fall for such an obvious bit of fakery.

Boru

The thing is that you are just accepting evidence without verification.  You are trusting that all of what you read is true when you don't even know the people who said it.

Are there any fairy tales that you don't believe in?

[Minimalist]

The DSS have been carbon dated - there is generally little dispute that they date from the mid 2d BC to the first century AD. 

But much of them are just religious horseshit.  Of much more interest are letters from the bar Kokhba revolt such as these by bar Kokhba himself.

http://www.livius.org/sources/content/or...ar-kochba/

[Ravenshire]

You're right, of course.  Someone managed to lay their hands on a load of 2200 year old parchment, made their own ink out of soot, honey, water and vinegar, carefully constructed authentic-seeming reed styli, went to all the trouble of learning ancient Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic, loaded the scrolls into a lot of clay jars (also 2200 years old), scattered some contemporaneous bronze coins about, and then managed to have a couple of semi-literate Bedouin shepherds 'discover' the scrolls in the 1940s.

I don't know how I could have been gullible enough to fall for such an obvious bit of fakery.

Boru

You're arguing with someone who believes the buy-bull was written by the English in the 17th century.

[Minimalist]

Well one version of it was. Not a particularly compelling version but xhristards think it is pretty or something.