Dead Sea scrolls at Drents Museum in Assen

English: Dead Sea Scroll - part of Isaiah Scroll (Isa 57:17 - 59:9), 1QIsa b (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Dead Sea scrolls very rarely travel outside Israel, but they represent one of the major archeological discoveries of the last century. Since they were first found around sixty years ago, they have yielded ground breaking new scholarship. Many of the interpretations and reconstructions are heavily discussed and contested. Not only do they contest previously held insights among scholars, but they also give new insights into two of the major religious traditions: Christianity and Judaism. Themes include the nature of Judaism at the time, the nature of the community of people living at Qumran, but also whether the notion of a suffering Messiah was already present before the time of Jesus.

Fragments of the Dead Sea scrolls on display at the Archeological Museum, Amman (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Some of the texts represent the oldest existing texts of the bible, but many are also of a much more mundane nature, representing documents that people would take anticipating a flight from violence. Because of the varied nature of the documents found, they are a window unto the life during the times when (parts of) the Middle East was under Roman and Greek rule, the revolts against these empires and the links Jewish communities had to other parts of the world.

The exhibition in Assen is the result of a cooperation between the Drents museum Assen, the Israeli Antiquities Authority and Mladen Popovic, director of the Qumran institute at the University of Groningen. It can be visited until the 5th of January 2014.

Photographic reproduction of the Great Isaiah Scroll, the best preserved of the biblical scrolls found at Qumran. It contains the entire Book of Isaiah in Hebrew, apart from some small damaged parts. This manuscript was probably written by a scribe of the Jewish sect of the Essenes around the second century BC. It is therefore over a 1000 years older than the oldest Masoretic manuscripts. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

During the 2nd century bce and 2nd century ce the majority of the Dead Sea Scrolls were written. The Scrolls clarify our understanding of the fundamental differences between different Jewish sects, such as the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes. at that time the people working at reproducing the writings of the Holy Scriptures considered their work very important and looked at the older writings as Sacred Scriptures where no fault could be allowed in the reproduction.

The non-biblical texts show profound discrepancies in the ways that the different groups, different Jewish sects, such as the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes, interpreted their Scripture and obeyed its guidelines.

The texts shown on the exhibition may shed light on philosophical disputes about issues such as the Temple and priesthood, the religious calendar and the afterlife. They also present us with the more practical disputes at the time with the focus on everyday law and observance.

The Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls digital library of the Israeli Antiquities Authority has a beautiful website with background information in English, as well as high quality images of the scrolls themselves.

Popovic explaining the significance of the scrolls on the Dutch new programmeKnevel and van den Brink (Dutch, towards the end of the program)

Article in Dutch highbrow newspaper NRC on the Dead Sea scrolls

Qumran Institute of Groningen University

> Drents Museum Dead Sea Scrolls Exhibition

Portion of a photographic reproduction of the Great Isaiah Scroll, the best preserved of the biblical scrolls found at Qumran. It contains the entire Book of Isaiah in Hebrew, apart from some small damaged parts. This manuscript was probably written by a scribe of the Jewish sect of the Essenes around the second century BC. It is therefore over a 1000 years older than the oldest Masoretic manuscripts. This picture shows all of Isaiah 53 (and is mostly identical to the Masoretic version). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

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Dode Zee-rollen te bezichtigen in Drents Museum te Assen

Drents Museum in Assen stelt tot en met januari 2014 de Dode Zee-rollen voor.

De snippers papyrus zijn één van de belangrijkste archeologische vondsten voor bijbelwetenschappers en worden samen met het grafcomplex van Toetanchamon in Egypte en het Chinese Terracotta Leger in Xi’an als één van de grootste archeologische ontdekkingen van de 20ste eeuw gezien. De rollen zijn rond het begin van de jaartelling verstopt in grotten vlakbij de Dode Zee in het huidige Israël. Dankzij de vinding konden verscheiden teksten als getrouw verklaard worden en kreeg men een bevestiging van de waarheid en gelijkvormigheid van de vele Bijbelvertalingen.

De tentoonstelling wordt samengesteld in nauwe samenwerking met het Qumran Instituut in Groningen en de Israel Antiquities Authority.

Vóór de Dode Zee-rollen kwam de oudste versie van veel Hebreeuwse Bijbelteksten uit ongeveer het jaar 1000. Door de vondst uit 1947 in Qumran kon de wetenschap ineens tien eeuwen verder terug in de tijd.

De overschrijvers bekeken de teksten die zij moesten over schrijven als heilige teksten waarbij de accuraatheid van het over schrijven of dupliceren van het allergrootste belang was.

Al mogen de Dode Zee-rollen geen inzicht geven in het al dan niet waar zijn van de Bijbel, geven ze wel een bijzondere inkijk in het (religieuze) leven van de Qumran-gemeenschap, een Joodse sekte die zich onder Romeins bewind terugtrok in de woestijn.

Nederlands: Dode zee (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Door de tentoonstelling kunnen wij nu ook vandaag een reis terug in de tijd maken. Het geeft ons de mogelijkheid om de tekstfragmenten te bewonderen zoals zij zich voordeden in het jodendom in de tijdsperiode dat Jezus er toen ook rondliep, en zijn leer meer dan enkele overeenkomsten vertoont met het gedachtegoed van de Essenen in Qumran.

Te zien zijn originele Bijbelse manuscripten en objecten uit de 2de eeuw voor Chr. tot de 1ste eeuw na Chr. en alternatieve teksten die niet in de Bijbel terecht zijn gekomen.

De teksten op deze wereldberoemde rollen geven ons onschatbare informatie over de geschiedenis en cultuur uit de periode waarin belangrijke kenmerken van het jodendom en christendom gevormd werden.

Verder worden er objecten getoond uit het oude Judea, uit de nederzetting van Qumran (de plaats waar de rollen gevonden zijn) en uit Jeruzalem.

Kossmann.dejong, exhibition architects uit Amsterdam, verwierf de opdracht om de tentoonstelling vorm te geven.
De tentoonstelling zal niet alleen in het Drents Museum te zien zijn, maar reist daarna door naar hetLandesmuseum Niederösterreich in Linz.

Uitzending Drents Diep 2-7-2013
Uitzending Nieuwsuur 8-12-2011  
Onderwijsprogramma Dode Zeerollen
 

Qumeran's caves (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

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Capitalism and economic policy and Christian survey

Thursday last week the Public Religion Research Institute and the Brookings Institution released a new survey on the intersections of religion, values, and attitudes toward capitalism, government, and economic policy.

On July 18, the religion, policy and politics project at Brookings co-hosted an event with the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) to release the new survey and accompanying report co-authored by Brookings Senior Fellows E.J. Dionne and William Galston and PRRI CEO Robert P. Jones, PRRI Research Director Daniel Cox, and PRRI Research Associate Juhem Navarro-Rivera.

The 2013 Economic Values Survey tackles a range of topics, including perceptions of economic wellbeing and upward mobility, the role of government, how well capitalism is working, the importance and availability of equal opportunity, values that should guide government policy on economic issues, and specific economic policies.  With its large sample size, the survey explores a range of fault lines on these issues, including racial and ethnic or generational divides.  Additionally, the survey takes up the question of the existence and vitality of religious progressives, compared to religious conservatives, and examines the relationship between theological beliefs and the views of both groups on capitalism and economic policy.

Nearly six out of 10 Americans (59 percent) say that being a religious person “is primarily about living a good life and doing the right thing,” as opposed to the more than one-third (36 percent) who hold that being religious “is primarily about having faith and the right beliefs.”

Religious conservatives are far more likely than religious progressives  to say religion is the most important thing in their lives.

“Among people of faith in general there is a strong consensus on the need for compassion and fairness for those in need,” Dionne said, even among conservatives. He said that more than 60 percent of both theological conservatives and social conservatives “support increasing the minimum wage to $10 an hour.”

Both groups also by large margins see the gap between the rich and poor as growing, and see a role for government in taking care of people who can’t take care of themselves.

While Dionne said that this pattern is not consistent — three in five Americans, for example, think that government has “gotten bigger because it has gotten involved in things that people should do for themselves” — he suggested there was at least an opening to use religion as a bridge across the ideological divide.

Robert P. Jones, CEO of PRRI, said that Americans’ two views of what makes a person religious harken back to the Protestant Reformation and to the Bible itself.

“This has been a perennial debate through the ages in Christianity,” said Jones. “The Pauline literature, especially in the Book of Romans, makes the case for religious justification by faith alone, while the Book of James seems to state the very opposite — ‘faith without works is dead.’”

The religious conservatives are holding an advantage over religious progressives in terms of size and homogeneity. “However, the percentage of religious conservatives shrinks in each successive generation, with religious progressives outnumbering religious conservatives in the millennial generation. “Religious progressives are significantly younger and more diverse than their conservative counterparts,” Jones said.

Forty-seven percent of the Silent Generation (ages 66 to 88) are religious conservatives, compared with 34 percent of Baby Boomers, 23 percent of Gen Xers and 17 percent of Millennials.

While the Christian right makes up 28 percent of the population and garners more cultural attention — Jones found that there are 27,000 global monthly Google searches for “Christian Right” compared with just over 8,000 searches for “Christian left” – religious progressives are only 9 percentage points behind, with 19 percent of the population.

“What we see is not a one-to-one replacement of religious conservatives with religious progressives,” Jones explained. Instead, the ranks of religious conservatives over time are declining, while religious progressives maintain their share of the population. “But there’s also this growing number of non-religious Americans.” If the trends continue, religious progressives eventually will outnumber religious conservatives.

The report, dubbed the “Economic Values Survey,” uses respondents’ views on everything — from God to the Bible to the role of government in the economy — to create a new scale of religiosity that divides Americans into four groups: religious conservatives (28 percent), religious moderates (38 percent), religious progressives (19 percent) and the nonreligious (15 percent.)

According to the survey, white evangelicals are more likely to say the  free market and Christian values are at odds than black Protestants,mainline Protestants, Catholics, and religiously unaffiliated Americans.  Strangely enough lots of white Americans give a lot of attention to the attachment to objects and like to have many gadgets from the first hours.

 

> Follow the discussion at #EconValues

Please do find:

Materialism, would be life, and aspirations

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Allowed to heal

The Talmud specifically derives from the Torah
 that, "A physician is allowed to heal."
 But nowhere has a doctor been given the right
 to determine that an ill person is incurable

- Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Lubavitch (1789-1866)

Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneersohn, the Tzemach Tzedek, the Third Rabbi of Lubavitch. The seventh Lubavitcher Rebbe was named similarly: Menachem Mendel Schneerson (without an "h" in his surname.) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Ninth of Av

On the Ninth of Av of the year 2449 from creation (1312 BCE), the generation of Jews who came out of Egypt under Moses' leadership 16 months earlier were condemned to die in the desert and the entry into the Land of Israel was delayed for 40 years.
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Both the first and second Holy Temples which stood in Jerusalem were destroyed on Av 9: the First Temple by the Babylonians in the year 3338 from creation (423 BCE), and the second by the Romans in 3829 (69 CE).

Excavated stones from the Western Wall of the Temple Mount (Jerusalem), knocked onto the street below by Roman battering rams in 70 C.E. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Mourning the destruction of the Temple and the exile of Israel, (see "Today in Jewish History") the Jews abstain from eating and drinking, bathing, the wearing of leather footwear, and marital relations--for the night and day of Av 9 (i.e., from sundown on Av 8 to nightfall on Av 9). It is customary to sit on the floor or a low seat until after mid-day. Torah study is restricted to laws of mourning, passages describing the destruction of the Temple, and the like. The tefillin are worn only during the afternoon Minchah prayers. (For more laws and customs see link below.)

The Ninth of Av is also a day of hope. The Talmud relates that Moshiach ("anointed one"--the Messiah), was born at the very moment that the Temple was set aflame and the Galut began. [This is in keeping with the teachings of the Jewish sages that, "In every generation is born a descendent of Judah who is worthy to become Israel's Moshiach" (Bartinoro on Ruth); "When the time will come, G-d will reveal Himself to him and send him, and then the spirit of Moshiach, which is hidden and secreted on high, will be manifested in him" (Chattam Sofer).]

Links:
Mitzvah Minute: Tisha b'Av
Laws of Tishah B'Av
Fast of Tishah B'Av

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P2P Sunday School

There where fifteen volunteers who came from the USA to help out during the school holidays to run some holiday club programs for the children to attend.

P2P at their Sunday School ran a games day where they played many different games with children. The nice thing about the good weather and playing outside is that other children could see the activities and liked it so much that they also wanted to join in.

2P found children walking by on the street coming in and joining them. At the end of the afternoon they had just over 60 children attending.

Close on 55 children attend. There were two crafts for them to make and take home and then P2P played games with them so they could get to know one another.



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African creches updates

The past few weeks P2P have had a record breaking amount of creche upgrades, God has blessed them and is always involved in helping provide the funds and the man power to make a difference in these teachers and children's lives.

Cleaning out class rooms and cleaning off anything from the walls, painting the classrooms, installing balancing beams, tyres and jungle gums, it is all art of the job to make the environment of the children nicer.

Please continue reading:

Pre-school upgrades in Tembisa