I would ascribe the so-called controversy surrounding the Dead Sea Scrolls to the place and time of their discovery (two years before Israel’s declaration of independence). Obviously the most powerful force in 1946/47 in the region would be Christian scholars. And given the history of their church during the previous two millennia, it’s not surprising that they tried to get an exclusive hold on the findings — in their view, just in case (for ideological reasons). Thankfully, Israelis stepped in few decades later and all was resolved. It’s the same problem as with Egyptian artifacts appropriated by English and other European researchers. As for the possibility of missing scrolls — almost all crucial passages from Tanakh are included and line up (and all blanks are sufficiently filled in by other sources). So, I really don’t see what groundbreaking info might be missing.
As a side note, nowadays even a kid can see that Catholic and Orthodox churches and all their protestant offspring are a sham. And it was a common knowledge to everyone outside of these churches throughout their whole history. So, what’s exactly controversial about it?
As for Kamal Salibi … well, he was a pan-arabist. I bet that if he was alive today, he would try to prove that Universe originated in Arabia, and he would spin convoluted theories to support that claim. But seriously — he says that “evidence is overwhelming”, but all I see are arguments based off of Koran, whereas archaeology, history, DNA and linguistic studies all put the “origins of Bible” in current day Israel (and Babylon, i.e. the “official story”). Also the heterodoxy of ancient Israel (northern kingdom) was Sumerian and Babylonian (Baal, etc.), not messianic (although the myth of Tammuz and Inanna is close enough and has its origins in said region).
But I agree, it’s a bit more complex than that, because monotheism as we know it today is basically a mixture of original Levantine animism(s) and non-dual philosophy that most probably came into Levant from north with Proto-Indo-Europeans ca. 4000 BC.
I also agree that Christianity is most probably a continuation of Essenes — John the Baptist is described as a prototype of “desert mystic”, Jesus’ “temptation in the desert” looks like a final mystical breakthrough (akin to Buddha’s night under the Bodhi tree), and his missing years thus might point to a time spent in Nazarene community (plus John was Jesus’ cousin — go figure). It’s also uncanny how the Nazarene “Teacher of Righteousness” resembles Biblical Jesus. Still, I would say that Essenes were Jews — equally as sadhus are every bit as Hindu as their Brahmin counterparts.
When it comes to Gnostics and the ideological war Orthodox church wages against them to this day — that was exactly my point. We know that the Christian church tries to squish any “opposition” (though Gnostics in times of Irenaeus were already lost equally as Orthodoxy — and ironically enough until Nag Hammadi findings, the most comprehensive description of Christian Gnosticism comes from Ireneaus), thus it was just a reinforcement of my question — what’s controversial about it? From the works of early “church fathers” (Saul, Ireneaus, Eusebius, etc.) we know that all of these men were arrogant power-hungry idiots lacking direct gnosis. Should it surprise us that their theology and the institution they build exhibits the same symptoms?
