False Christians?

the contents of the dead sea scrolls (taken from a deep-storage cache in a cave near qumran) have been pretty well examined...
(these numbers are prolly "close") --- maybe 10-20% of the texts are indeed indentical to the hebrew scriptures (what christians call "the old testament"), & another 60-70% is more-or-less standard commentaries & interpretaions on the texts (mishnah?), & the remainder is material exclusive to the essene community (the sons of light vs the sons of darkness, the martyred "righteous teacher", the evil priest, etc.)...

(& the qumran texts seem to be like other texts & fragments found in desert stashes & lost library relics from alexandria (egypt) to other finds in syria, turkey, and many other locations in the near east...)\



possible term paper assignment for a religion 202 class:

compare & contrast the polititcs, belief systems & eschatological expectations of the following jewish communitites from the early common era:
sadducees
pharisees
zealots (sicarii)
essenes (theraputae)
gnostics
hellenists
followers of "the way" ("new-covenanters" = christians ---> both the jerusalem church (james & peter) AND the gentile churches (paul & timothy)...)



mmmmmkay?