Endnote 1 – The Dead Sea Scrolls and Early Christianity: Part One

André Dupont-Sommer, The Dead Sea Scrolls: A Preliminary Survey (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1952), p. 99 (the author’s preface is dated July 14, 1950). He felt the need to defend these striking formulations in a later book; see his The Jewish Sect of Qumran and the Essenes: New Studies on the Dead Sea Scrolls (New York: MacMillan, 1955 [transl. from French 1953 edition]), pp. 160–162. Note, “I drew attention to these comparisons the Dead Sea Scrolls. In my desire to draw attention to this unexpected fact which the new texts seemed to disclose, I sketched out a rapid parallel which was intended to stimulate the curiosity of the reader, without pretending to solve a most complex problem at the price of oversimplication” (p. 160). As he said in this later publication, the resemblance between Jesus and the Teacher “ … is far from being complete” (p. 161).