ABSTRACT
It will be seen from the above discussions how sharply every word of these documents has been scrutinized and what far-reaching inferences may be drawn from the slightest allusion or suggestion. The existence of the remnants of this library, which are constantly being augmented, this sudden flooding in of only partially understood evidence, have had the result more and more of extending speculation in every direction—on the history of the documents of what we call the Old Testament, on the documents already known of what is called the inter-testamental period, and on the beginnings of Christianity. In the last case, certain resemblances have been obvious from the first: the influence of the Dead Sea Sect seemed traceable in some of the language of the Gospel according to St. John and in the doctrine of the Pauline Epistles; the behavior of Jesus at the Last Supper appeared to be explicable as a challenging of the protocol laid down for the Essenes in the prescriptions for their sacred banquet. And attempts are still being made—sometimes with extremely implausible results—to link what we know of the literature of early Christianity with the last that we know of the literature of the Sect. One of the most interesting of these is the theory of Yigael Yadin in regard to the New Testament Epistle to the Hebrews.
