Jesus & the Riddle of the Dead Sea Scrolls: Unlocking th Secrets of His Life Story

Rating:
Summary: an outstanding piece of research!
Review: Here is a solid expanation of the historical beginning of Christianity and for many miracles in the Bible. This is history taken directly from the Dead Sea Scrolls unfiltered by organized religion I expected blockbuster reaction and great debate. I am greeted with a book out of print instead. I theorize that enough copies are in circulation that the explosion is merely slowed down. I hope it is not stiffled completely. Discovery Channel video "The Riddle of the Dead Sea Scrools" covers a good portion of Barbara Thiering's discoveries.

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Summary: Radical, but not backed up by evidence
Review: If this is the first book you read on the subject of the historical Jesus, you may well be impressed. It is a liberating experience to understand that the gospels, with all their contradictions, are political documents rather than 'the revealed word of God'. However, any examination of what the gospels actually are absolutely must be backed up with flawless evidence. This is the price of rejecting an interpretation upon which much of western history has been built.

The Pesher method is seductive. It offers a holy grail of meaning - a true understanding of what actually happened, something scholars have failed to uncover. But if you come to this book after researching the subject exhaustively, I'm afraid this book is an illusion.

Promising, even tantalizing, it signally fails to deliver on the promise. The explanation of the Pesher itself is rudimentary, and while some texts are given interesting twists, they are adrift in vast seas of speculation. It is no good hypothesizing that one verse has a new meaning, when those surrounding it bear no meaning as a result.

If Ms. Thiering really wants to convince, then she should apply her extraordinary scholarship to presenting a total picture, not one where every so often one verse can change everything. It can't. It doesn't. So that, ultimately, anyone with some reading on the historical Jesus will realize that this is one more chimera.

To be specific in one instance, if the early christians - Peter, Paul and Jesus (still alive) - had truly decided to hoodwink mankind into believing an untruth, i.e. that Jesus was crucified and raised from the dead, it surely casts them in a doubtful moral light. Tiering discusses neither this, nor any debate among the characters themselves as to the morality of the method. If Jesus travelled around Asia Minor and stood to one side, listening while Paul preached the story of his death and resurrection, he was a lesser man than I have understood to date.

A lot of scholarship hovers around this hypothesis, but in the final analysis it is not enough.

Rating:
Summary: Radical, but not backed up by evidence
Review: If this is the first book you read on the subject of the historical Jesus, you may well be impressed. It is a liberating experience to understand that the gospels, with all their contradictions, are political documents rather than 'the revealed word of God'. However, any examination of what the gospels actually are absolutely must be backed up with flawless evidence. This is the price of rejecting an interpretation upon which much of western history has been built.

The Pesher method is seductive. It offers a holy grail of meaning - a true understanding of what actually happened, something scholars have failed to uncover. But if you come to this book after researching the subject exhaustively, I'm afraid this book is an illusion.

Promising, even tantalizing, it signally fails to deliver on the promise. The explanation of the Pesher itself is rudimentary, and while some texts are given interesting twists, they are adrift in vast seas of speculation. It is no good hypothesizing that one verse has a new meaning, when those surrounding it bear no meaning as a result.

If Ms. Thiering really wants to convince, then she should apply her extraordinary scholarship to presenting a total picture, not one where every so often one verse can change everything. It can't. It doesn't. So that, ultimately, anyone with some reading on the historical Jesus will realize that this is one more chimera.

To be specific in one instance, if the early christians - Peter, Paul and Jesus (still alive) - had truly decided to hoodwink mankind into believing an untruth, i.e. that Jesus was crucified and raised from the dead, it surely casts them in a doubtful moral light. Tiering discusses neither this, nor any debate among the characters themselves as to the morality of the method. If Jesus travelled around Asia Minor and stood to one side, listening while Paul preached the story of his death and resurrection, he was a lesser man than I have understood to date.

A lot of scholarship hovers around this hypothesis, but in the final analysis it is not enough.

Rating:
Summary: One of my favorite books, and it's still available!
Review: This book is available under the title Jesus the Man. If you like this book I recommend The Book that Jesus Wrote by Barbara Thiering

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Summary: An Early 1990s Controversy
Review: _Jesus and the Riddle of the Dead Sea Scrolls_ provoked quite a bit of controversy when it came out in 1992. In it Barbara Thiering made presentable in a very easy to read fashion her theory that the Teacher of Righteousness (found in the Dead Sea Scrolls) is actually John the Baptist, AND ... the Wicked Priest or the Man of lies is Jesus of Nazareth.

Crucial to Thiering's theory is her pesher technique as described in chapter four. Thiering explains that pesher as found in the Old Testament means an "interpretation." However in the Dead Sea Scrolls, a pesher is a word puzzle set up by the writer so that hidden historical meanings could be conveyed. Thiering goes on to apply this technique to the New Testament.

Her theory is generally criticized for one of two things. First, Thiering's pesher technique is backward with regard to the NT. Whereas a pesher is a method for reinterpreting previously written authoritative writings, in Thiering's view the NT was originally written in a codified form. One might note with interest that if this were in fact so, then no one has realized this for about 2000 years. For example, the subapostolic writers totally miss it. The second criticism that scholars generally raise against Thiering's theory is her redating of some of the DSS in order to make them compatible.

_Riddle_ was controversial when it was published in the early 1990s. However the theory has gained few adherents and few scholars give it much attention anymore.