The scrolls and early Christianity

Abstract ‘The scrolls and early Christianity’ looks at what the Dead Sea Scrolls can tell us about Christianity. Any link between the Dead Sea Scrolls and the early Church generates a great deal of sensationalism. Some say that the scrolls are New Testament documents that depict Jesus. For instance, one fragment apparently tells of a ‘slain prince [or messiah]’. In fact, the prince was actually slaying someone else—oddities in vowel and suffix use in ancient Hebrew give rise to the misinterpretation. Another theory suggests that there was a common sectarian matrix in use at the birth of Christianity, meaning that one sect could use words very differently to another.