Note: this topic is from 8/01/2002. A re-ping. Thanks vannrox.
Posted on 08/01/2002 6:52:18 PM PDT by vannrox
A professor claims a skeleton discovered near where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found may be the remains of John the Baptist.
He suggests the phrophet who annointed Christ may also have been the leader of the tribe to which the burial ground belonged.
Israeli archaelogists say his theory is far-fetched and that the burial site unearthed is probably that of an 18th century Bedouin man.
US professor Richard Freund at a Centre for Judaic Studies in Connecticut, has been art of an expedition in the Judean Desert.
Professor Freund says there is "circumstantial evidence" the well-preserved skeleton they discovered may be the founder of the Jewish sect called Essenes whose scribes wrote the ancient Hebrew scrolls.
"It is possible that a single person like John the Baptist, a leader in the New Testament, may have been this anonymous mysterious person, the Teacher of Righteousness, mentioned in the text of the Dead Sea Scrolls," he said.
But Magen Broshi, one of the heads of the expedition and an expert on the Dead Sea Scrolls, dismissed Freund's theory.
"No person in the world believes there is a connection between the two. There is nothing to it. What we have unearthed is most probably a skeleton of a Bedouin man from about two or three hundred years ago," he said.
Mr Broshi said there was too much of a discrepancy in the dates of the John the Baptist who was killed in AD 29 and the sect who lived from 150 BC to AD 68. But Professor Freund says the skeleton was found in an elaborate burial chamber in a prominent position in the Qumran cemetery.
"There is no other burial like this. It is the most elaborate burial one can imagine in a very simple place," he argued.
Story filed: 23:26 Thursday 1st August 2002
PS. Jesus was an Essene, though not a member of the strictly-celibate sect of Essenes that ran Qumran.
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Note: this topic is from 8/01/2002. A re-ping. Thanks vannrox.
“There was a man from the desert with naps in his head
The sand that he walked was also his bed
The words that he spoke made the people assume
There wasn’t too much left in the upper room
With skins on his back and hair on his face
They thought he was strange by the locusts he ate
The Pharisees tripped when they heard him speak
Until the king took the head off this Jesus freak”
“Judge Crater “
Bwaaaa! I learned about him from Mad Magazine!
...or might be Prester John, instead.
I vote for shlomo levinson rather than john
Or maybe Trapper John, MD, after that accident with a time machine.
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