The Bible

I hardly noticed the throngs of tourists headed to The Knesset, because I was there to see the Dead Sea Scrolls.

This museum's roof looks like the circular clay pots in which the scrolls were found. The roof, in a fountain pool, is painted white. Nearby stands a stark dark-colored wall. A sign explained the symbolism.

The Essenes, a small ultra conservative Jewish sect at the time of Jesus, considered themselves "sons of the Light." They saw the world as a great battle between the light of God's holiness and the darkness of sin and human wickedness.

I had visited the remains of an Essene settlement. It was in Southern Israel at Qumran. The day was hot and the desert rocks shimmered.

They had a very austere life. As I wandered among the ruins I pondered the gift these long gone devotees had given to the 20th Century.

My mind went to AD 70.

The news then was bad - very bad.

Roman General Titus, who later became emperor, was devastating the land in reprisals for the Jewish Rebellion that broke out a few years before. Everything Jewish was slaughtered or burned.

The Essenes hid their library of hand-copied scriptures in clay pots. The pots were placed in caves in the hills. The hope was that after the trouble ended they'd all return and the settlement would be repopulated.

Rome's swords flashed, the buildings were destroyed, the old were butchered, the leaders were crucified and the young were dragged away in chains. No one returned. The pots were layered in dust for 1900 years.

I wasn't raised in a Christian home. My early days as a believer were filled with questions. One of my struggles was to believe that the Bible was authentic. Even if the original documents were written by God's own hand - the Bible claims that inspired human penmanship was the mechanism- I couldn't believe that copy after copy could be made during hundreds of years without errors creeping in.

My pastor mentioned that 2 decades before, a goat herder had flung some pebbles into a desert cave in Israel, heard some pottery breaking and upon investigating made a discovery that shocked the world. The manuscripts were nearly lost by bits being sold cheaply to tourists, but another long story illustrates the zeal by which they were regathered.

Even in training for the Christian Ministry I audited lectures that presupposed that the book we now hold as The Bible, can, at best contain only fragments of the original documents. A Doctor of Divinity went to great lengths to "prove" to us that its text was untrustworthy.



One of his lectures contained the case of the 3 Isaiahs. The book in our Bible by that name was supposed by some scholars to have been three small books and these were lumped together.

All of this is background to why I was so keen to see a particular scroll on display at the museum. One of the pots contained the entire book of Isaiah.

The staff regards the find as sacred and when a Jewish woman to my right tried to sneak a photograph she was escorted out by a very stern security guard. I didn't need a camera for I was misty-eyed as I recorded every inch of that glass-covered scroll in my mind.

I was looking at a miracle.

Mind you perhaps the miracle was in the modern Bible back in my hotel room. Not a word was different.

The Bible verse came to mind: "The grass withers and the flowers fall but the word of our God shall stand forever" Isaiah 40:8

How Pastor Andrew uses Bible verses to "hear a word from God"