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Originally Posted by stang
Can’t speak about the forgeries but in the original findings there were multiple copies of the same books. (Like the book of Genesis was found 10 times i believe) So they don’t HAVE to add to the story.
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But an important point to include here is that the actual Dead Sea Scrolls do in fact add substantially to the story, and have completely revolutionized our understanding about the Bible, early Judaism, and early Christianity.
Quote:
Originally Posted by stang
Man made forgeries. The original scrolls contained both biblical and non-biblical writings as it were.
Sounds like these were very well made forgeries to take advantage of the high price they command
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Here is one of the wrinkles in this story: the vast majority of these forgeries are not very good. One of the deeply seeded problems in our discipline is the extremely low threshold of acceptance for antiquities. The argument made for the Dead Sea Scrolls for decades has been that we can accept as authentic anything that can be connected directly or indirectly to the Kando family of antiquities dealers. Such is nonsense, and the procedures for authenticating antiquities are something that I and my colleagues are actively working to change.