I refer to the Dead Sea Scrolls as the "Heretics' Scrolls" since, from the standpoint of traditional, normative Judaism, that's what their authors were. Sectarian heretics like the authors of the the Scrolls cannot be relied on to accurately transmit texts in accordance with the rules & norms of the normative orthodoxy that they broke away fro, denied & despised! (That would be like saying that a Donatist version of Luke indicated that traditional versions of Luke were faulty.)
This http://www.imj.org.il/eng/shrine/index.html is the Israel Museum (where they're kept) site about the Scrolls.
Our Sages excluded the so-called Apocryphal books from the Tanakh (what we call what you call the "Old Testament") for several reasons. Ferinstance, I
Maccabees, while considered to be very historically accurate & written by a believing Jew, was not considered to be Divinely inspired.
Shalom SSM. I never read Maccabees but I believe a lot of christians use that with the Book of Daniel.
I of course do not beleive Daniel 11/12 has much to do with that historical period as the author of this enlightening site shows. Depends on how one views the non-Hebrew book of Revelation and the Hebrew book of Daniel. Shalom.
http://www.awitness.org/bible.html
The
book of Daniel has become important to Christian theology because the gospel of Mark made constant reference to the book, calling Christ the son of man, and because Mark wrote an apocalypse borrowing the image of the Beast of Daniel's prophecy, which would appear again later in the Christian Apocalypse, the
Book of Revelations. For this reason you often hear that Daniel predicted the rise of the Revived Roman empire, but an examination proves that the prophecy in the Book of Daniel can be dated to the time of
Antiochus the Selucid Greek beast of Daniel's prophecy. The only reason there is a need to 'revive' someone is that prophecy turned out to be false in that the last few verses never came true.........
...........In chapter 7 of the book, as in chapters 10 and 11, history is described up to
the time of Maccabees. History is fine in Daniel until you reach the time of 2nd century, when suddenly the prophecies fall to pieces and become false (which is a pretty good indication of when the book was written).
