The Manuscripts of the Old Testament – The Dead Sea Scrolls

We are currently looking at the manuscripts of the Old Testament. Last week we began with the Masoretic Text, which is often considered the most important evidence for the Old Testament. However, scholars had longed to find manuscripts closer in time to the original writings – which is what we will see today as we look at the Dead Sea Scrolls.

The Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS) are generally considered one of the most important archaeological finds of the 20th Century. They were discovered at Wadi Qumran in Israel, mainly during the 1940s and 1950s. The DSS contain both Biblical and extra-biblical writings. The astounding thing, however, is their age. These manuscripts were made between 250 BC and 70 AD. This means that they are 1,000 years closer to the original Old Testament autographs (original writing itself) than the Leningrad Codex of the Masoretes. In one astounding find scholars were able to go back over 1,000 years to compare the texts.

The DSS are comprised of hundreds of thousands of fragments from over 800 manuscripts. They contain fragments of every OT book except for Esther, along with a lot of other religious books, and community rules. The biblical books most often found in the fragments are (in order) Psalms, Deuteronomy, Genesis, and Isaiah. Perhaps the greatest single manuscript is The Isaiah scroll, which contains the entire book of Isaiah, and was made around 100 BC. This scroll is on display in Israel.

As noted above, the DSS gives us a look at the Hebrew text 1000 years prior to the Masoretic texts presently in use. Although there have been some differences found, in large part these have been minor (such as spelling differences and scribal errors and corrections). To be certain there are some variations between the DSS and the Masoretic texts, but these are mainly minor and are often pointed out in the footnotes of modern translations. The main effect of the DSS has been to show the great accuracy that was maintained in the transmission of the Hebrew text. God had preserved His Word!

The Masoretic texts and the Dead Sea Scrolls are the two most important Hebrew manuscript families for the Old Testament. However, there are also ancient translations in other languages and we will look at the most important of these next week.

In Christ,

Bret