DD 226-230.999 (Tony) The Dead Sea Srolls, 1947-1969 by Edmund Wilson (229 WIL)

The Dead Sea Scrolls were announced recently to be making a visit to North Carolina's Science Museum in Raleigh. So when I found that a book on the Scrolls were in the next level of my Dewey Project readings- I jumped at the chance to prep myself for the exihibit.
The book is actually 2 books in one. Volume 1 is written immediately after their discovery in 1947 and volum 2 is written after 22 years of research and woe. So, lets review each volume separately.
VOLUME 1:
I thought I was familiar with the contents of the scrolls, but having read this book- I found that not just I be a bunch of Southern Baptists in Wake County were dead wrong. Being the product of a mother and grandparents whom considered themselves members of the true congregation, I was raised with the knowledge that the DSS (as I will refer to the scrolls from now on) was comprised of every book of the Modern Bible. However, I now know that is not true, but that in reality not every book was found, nor are many of the scrolls Canon, but actually filled with Jewish mysticism (think Kabbalah, without Madonna or Aston Kutcher)
The most fascinating parts of this book deals with the history of the original owners of the DSS and with the pains taken to find, obtain and begin to research the texts. The biggest problem I had though with those parts were that anytime a french guy or an arab was qouted, the sentence is typed in the native tongue and not translated. It may not seem like a big deal, but this lack of interpretation is a big rason as to why I hate the movie "Stargate".
The least interesting parts involve the author's lengthy attempts to explain why misspelling make these texts saying different meanings. I know it's an important step for researchers, but for someone like me, I was the just of the research. I don not need to know how to conjugate Hebrew.

Volume 2:
This section was written just after the 7 Day War, so there are plenty of accounts of the cultural battle of Jews and Arabs. These recounts make for a compelling read and the author does a tremendous job.
However, I am getting tired of reading books about religion written by skeptics. It's getting old! This guy keeps saying Jesus is not the Messiah, nor is he the son of God, because many of the DSS was finding accounts of Jesus' life were very similar to the tales of Jewish Folklore that deal with heroes and "messiahs'. Let's get one thing straight. each of the "messiahs" the author talks about never were raised from the dead after 3 days, much less 3 centurys, nor do the folk tlaes reveal this, thus this explains why the Jews are still looking for their Savior. Christ on the other hand did raise from the dead and not only do the 4 gospels proclaim this, but over 300 hundred 1st hand accounts have been found by other writers attrbuting that they saw this ressurection. Mr. Wilson never even entertains this fact.
So, once the writer went into this diatribe against Christianity and literally said that beleivers were living in a pipe dream, I lost interest in this book (the whole not just a particular volume) pretty quick.