BEYOND THE DEAD SEA: THE ESSENES AND THE QUMRAN COMMUNITY To paraphrase the Bobby Darin pop hit, "Somewhere, beyond the Dead Sea, there’s a religion waiting for me." There was a serious lack of documentation on Judaism practices prior to the birth of Christ, which made understanding the reasons behind the emergence of Christianity even more complex. Then, in 1947, while a young Arab boy, Muhammad ed-Dhib, was throwing stones at a cave, breaking a jar with one, therein were contained the complete scrolled texts of the Old Testament, known thereafter as the Dead Sea scrolls. Although theologians