What impact do the DSS’s have upon Christianity today?
What impact do the DSS’s have upon Christianity today? Christians certainly have every reason to stand firm in their faith and, because of the DSS’s, grow stronger. This is true for a number of reasons.
First, the DSS’s give the Bible another tick mark to its credit. How is this? When the DSS’s were discovered they provided manuscripts that predated the earliest copies known prior to 1947 by up to 1000 years. The book of Isaiah is a wonderful example of this fact. Biblical scholars were given an opportunity to compare our modern versions of Isaiah to scrolls that were 1000 years older than our oldest to date. What they discovered was nothing short of amazing. Other than spelling and grammar issues, the texts were consistent. This tells the contemporary Christian that God has indeed preserved His Word down through the generations. They can remain confident that what they read to today is indeed an uncorrupted text. This undermines the Islamic and Mormon arguments against the Christian’s Bible.
Second, the DSS’s support the Christian’s conviction that Jesus viewed Himself as the Messiah. (See: Messianic Expectation and the DSS’s)
There are other ways in which Christianity has been helped by the DSS’s that may not be quite as significant. Issues like baptism, end times, and biblical interpretation are examples of this nature. Then one finds the obvious helps regarding the Jewish characteristics of the Qumran community that remain consistent with our Christian heritage.
It must be remembered, however, that not every aspect of the Qumran community would be consistent with Christianity. At this point in time, no evidence exists that this community knew of Jesus Christ, let alone believed in Him. So, any material that would challenge Christianity stemming from the Jewish nature of this community should be dealt with similarly to those challenges that come from Judaism in general.