The spiritual thinker and the Dead Sea Scrolls

Originally appeared on spirituality.com

If you were to browse in Mary Baker Eddy’s personal library, you’d find that she had a lively interest in new discoveries about the Bible, especially those that tended to illuminate thought or increase spiritual understanding. As the author of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, she paid close attention to what scholars and theologians were saying about the Bible.

Among the books in her collection were New Sayings of Jesus and Fragment of a Lost Gospel from Oxyrhynchus; The Unwritten Sayings of Christ: The Words of Our Lord not Recorded in the Four Gospels; The Life of Christ. In addition to these and other texts about the Scriptures, she owned approximately 40 Bibles in various translations.

With this idea of spiritual illumination as a guideline, what can today’s spiritual thinker find in the Dead Sea Scrolls? A lot of the content is fragmentary, and perhaps of greatest interest to scholars of Bible translations and related work.

Enjoy 1 free Sentinel article or audio program each month, including content from 1898 to today.

We'd love to hear from you!

Easily submit your testimonies, articles, and poems online.

Submit