many of the writings that were found here at Qumran linked in specifically to one book of the Bible namely the Book of Daniel and the Book of Daniel was cherished by many Jews in this period right on through the time of Jesus and beyond for all sorts of things not least the heroic struggle of Jews who are under pressure from foreign pagan hordes but also particularly for a chronological scheme which we find in Daniel chapter 9 Daniel chapter 9 is about Daniel himself being in exile in Babylon and Daniel prays and says surely Jeremiah received
this word from the Lord that the Exile was going to last for 70 years and Daniel says so please isn't the 70 years pretty well up now and an angel comes and gives Daniel his answer which is basically good news and bad news he says good news yes God knows about this and he's gonna fulfill his promise but the bad news is that it won't be 70 years it'll be 70 times 70 years in other words 490 years and that's not just something which is an odd glitch in the Book of Daniel rather we can
see many Jews in the period between roughly 200 BC and 200 AD who are studying Daniel and trying to figure out when the 490 years would be up and here's the thing many of the people here in Qumran in their expositions of Scripture are saying we are the people who are the pioneers of that real end of Exile we are the ones with whom God has renewed the Covenant we are the ones who have the Holy Spirit we are the ones who have the forgiveness of sins which is part of the meaning of end of
Exile because Israel had gone into exile because of sin so that the end of Exile will mean Redemption and remission and forgiveness of sins and new Exodus and all those wonderful things now the point about all this for the New Testament is like this that we can see in the New Testament several signs of that same speculation that the Exile okay some of us came back from Babylon but the real exile has continued maybe their red texts like we find in ezra and nehemiah which speak of still being slave in our own land so that
even though they'd come back they were still enslaved and what slaves need is a new Exodus and so the whole new Exodus theme which Jesus himself made themed attic for his public career after all Jesus chose Passover time Exodus time to go up to Jerusalem and do what he had to do and from that moment on all his followers knew after his resurrection that they had to interpret what had happened in the light of those great promises about the new Exodus and about the real return from exile and so we can see writers like Paul
drawing on many of the biblical themes about the real return from exile to say this is what is now at last happened only the slavery in question was not slavery at the hands of the pagans that's comparatively trivial it was the slavery of sin and death themselves it's as though Jesus by dying in the way that he did dying under the curse of the law dying under the oppression of the Roman occupying forces Jesus had taken exile to the lowest point that it could go so that then his resurrection had to be seen as the
real beginning of the real return from exile and that meant that when the early church experienced the gift of the Holy Spirit and when they believed that God had forgiven their sins these were themes which were already current here at Qumran and in many other parts of the Jewish world of the day and they were saying that which other Jews have spoken of from this angle and that we now claim and believe has been given to us in and through Jesus who is the Messiah who is the lord of the world who is the one
who is leading the way out of the Exile of sin and death themselves and on into God's new creation you [Music]
