Before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the oldest manuscripts of the Hebrew Scriptures were from about the ninth and tenth centuries C.E. Could these manuscripts truly be relied upon as faithful transmissions of God’s Word, since the writing of the Hebrew Scriptures was completed well over one thousand years earlier? Professor Julio Trebolle Barrera, a member of the international team of editors of the Dead Sea Scrolls, states: “The Isaiah Scroll [from Qumran] provides irrefutable proof that the transmission of the biblical text through a period of more than one thousand years by the hands of Jewish copyists has been extremely faithful and careful.”
THE scroll that Barrera refers to contains the complete book of Isaiah. To date, among over 200 Biblical manuscripts found at Qumran, portions have been identified of every book of the Hebrew Scriptures except the book of Esther. Unlike the Isaiah Scroll, most are represented only by fragments, containing less than one tenth of any given book. The Bible books that were most popular at Qumran were Psalms (36 copies), Deuteronomy (29 copies), and Isaiah (21 copies). These are also the books most frequently quoted in the Christian Greek Scriptures.
Although the scrolls demonstrate that the Bible has not undergone fundamental changes, they also reveal that to some extent there were different versions of Hebrew Bible texts used by Jews in the Second Temple period, each with its own variations. Not all the scrolls are identical to the Masoretic text in spelling or wording. Some are closer to the Greek Septuagint. Previously, scholars thought that the Septuagint’s differences might be the result of mistakes or even deliberate inventions by the translator. Now the scrolls reveal that many of these differences were actually due to variations in the Hebrew text. This may explain some cases in which early Christians quoted Hebrew Scripture texts using wording different from the Masoretic text.—Exodus 1:5; Acts 7:14.
Thus, this treasure trove of Biblical scrolls and fragments provides an excellent basis for studying the transmission of the Hebrew Bible text. The Dead Sea Scrolls have confirmed the value of both the Septuagint and the Samaritan Pentateuch for textual comparison. They provide an additional source for Bible translators to consider for possible emendations to the Masoretic text. In a number of cases, they confirm decisions by the New World Bible Translation Committee to restore Jehovah’s name to places where it had been removed from the Masoretic text.
The scrolls describing the rules and beliefs of the Qumran sect make very clear that there was not just one form of Judaism in the time of Jesus. The Qumran sect had traditions different from those of the Pharisees and the Sadducees. These differences likely led to the sect’s retreating to the wilderness. They incorrectly saw in themselves a fulfillment of Isaiah 40:3 about a voice in the wilderness making the way of Jehovah straight. A number of the scroll fragments refer to the Messiah, whose coming the authors saw as imminent. This is of particular interest because of Luke’s comment that “the people were in expectation” of the Messiah’s coming.—Luke 3:15.
The Dead Sea Scrolls help us to a degree to understand the context of Jewish life during the time that Jesus preached. They provide comparative information for the study of ancient Hebrew and the Bible text. But the text of many of the Dead Sea Scrolls still needs closer analysis. Therefore, new insights may yet be gained. Yes, the greatest archaeological discovery of the 20th century continues to excite both scholars and Bible students as we move along in the 21st century.
The first of the Dead Sea Scroll discoveries occurred in 1947 in Qumran, a village situated about twenty miles east of Jerusalem on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea. A young Bedouin shepherd, following a goat that had gone astray, tossed a rock into one of the caves along the seacliffs and heard a cracking sound: the rock had hit a ceramic pot containing leather and papyrus scrolls that were later determined to be nearly twenty centuries old. Ten years and many searches later, eleven caves around the Dead Sea were found to contain tens of thousands of scroll fragments dating from the third century B.C. to A.D. 68 and representing an estimated eight hundred separate works.
The Dead Sea Scrolls comprise a vast collection of Jewish documents written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, and encompassing many subjects and literary styles. They include manuscripts or fragments of every book in the Hebrew Bible except the Book of Esther, all of them created nearly one thousand years earlier than any previously known biblical manuscripts. The scrolls also contain the earliest existing biblical commentary, on the Book of Habakkuk, and many other writings, among them religious works pertaining to Jewish sects of the time
The legends of what was contained in the Dead Sea Scrolls are far beyond what was actually there. There were no lost books of the Bible or other literature that there was not already other copies of. The vast majority of the Dead Sea Scrolls were simply copies of books of the Old Testament from 250-150 B.C. A copy or portion of nearly every Old Testament book was found in Qumran. There were extra-biblical and apocryphal books found as well, but again, the vast majority of the scrolls were copies of the Hebrew Old Testament. The Dead Sea Scrolls were such an amazing discovery in that the scrolls were in excellent condition and had remained hidden for so long (over 2000 years). The Dead Sea Scrolls can also give us confidence in the reliability of the Old Testament manuscripts since there were minimal differences between the manuscripts that had previously been discovered and those that were found in Qumran. Clearly this is a testament to the way God has preserved His Word down through the centuries, protecting it from extinction and guarding it against significant error.
Recommended Resource: What Are the Dead Sea Scrolls and Why Do They Matter? by David Noel Freedman & Pam Fox Kuhlken.
They were found in a cave by the dead sea around 1950 or so. A shepherd kid was pitching stones in the cae and heard a crash and found pottery with scrolls stuffewd inside. Turns out they were from the Essenes from centuries before Jesus.
Significant because the copies of scipture were virtually identical to the Old Testament fragments of today showing how reliable the Old Testament is. ALso giving a view of one of the larger Jewish groups, the essenes, of that day.
I figured you would get answers which showed that some people had an answer which was showing a lack of information. I myself am not an expert on the subject, but at least I know that there are parts of the Old Testament included in that collection.
What I have come to understand is that the Dead Sea Scrolls were removed from the regular traceable line of descendants of scriptures . . . they were out of the loop of what was known as scripture, yet they revealed only very subtle differences in what we already had.
What they did was confirm what we already had concerning what was called the Old Testament or the Jewish Bible, as being accurate. There was no wild change in scripture as was charged of the Bible by it's conspiring scholars.
There are books out now with translations of most of the texts that were found. Some people seem to believe that the texts were the Bible, but it's actually a collection of many religious texts, only some of which are from the Bible.
EDIT: Most of the charges of changed Biblical texts refer to problems with New Testament texts. I'm not aware of any controversy over Old Testament texts, so the Dead Sea Scrolls prove nothing about the controversy at all.
Among other things, the Dead Sea Scrolls contained portions of copies of the Bible much older than any manuscripts that we had. There was a portion of the Bible book of Isaiah that dated to 200 BCE, 1100 years older than the oldest one they had before that. And it was almost identical to the one we had, even though it had been copied for 1,100 years between them. This showed that the Bible wasn't "passed down by word of mouth and changed," as you often hear. Sir Frederick Kenyon, a director of the British Museum, confirmed this in a book, the title of this I have forgotten, from around 1950.
The Dead Sea Scrolls were placed their by the ancient Essenes who exposed Roman captivity in the 70 ad invasion of ancient Jerusalem. The Dead Sea Scrolls prove the name of the Creator of all things to be Yahweh. It also proves that the Messiah according to Isaiah 7:14 was a regular human because his mother is called a Hebrew word of Alma which means 'young woman' not virgin. It also proves that the titles 'God' and 'Lord' aren't names of Yahweh because Yahweh appears 7,000 times in these ancient Scrolls found a the Qumran desert caves. The ancient Hebrews worshiped Yahweh. The Dead Sea Scrolls were also found along with the Nag Hammdi. The Nag Hammadi proves that the gospels are nothing but something that was based on sun worship and that it was not a story based on foretold Messiah.
the dead sea scrolls
The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in eleven caves along the northwest shore of the Dead Sea between the years 1947 and 1956. The area is 13 miles east of Jerusalem and is 1300 feet below sea level. The mostly fragmented texts, are numbered according to the cave that they came out of. They have been called the greatest manuscript discovery of modern times. See a Dead Sea Scroll Jar.
"Probably the Dead Sea Scrolls have had the greatest Biblical impact. They have provided Old Testament manuscripts approximately 1,000 years older than our previous oldest manuscript. The Dead Sea Scrolls have demonstrated that the Old Testament was accurately transmitted during this interval. In addition, they provide a wealth of information on the times leading up to, and during, the life of Christ.
why are they so important?……..Ever since they were discovered in 1947, the Dead Sea Scrolls have proved to be one of the most important finds ever, informing mankind of their origins and, since they contain a 2000-year-old incarnation of the Bible, charting religious and sociological history. Learn how archaeologists found them and how the entire world reacted to their discovery, and watch a reenactment that purports to trace just how the documents ended up where they
did.
I am sending some links..
wow thanks for the question!!
I hope this was helpfu!!
Before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the oldest manuscripts of the Hebrew Scriptures were from about the ninth and tenth centuries C.E. Could these manuscripts truly be relied upon as faithful transmissions of God’s Word, since the writing of the Hebrew Scriptures was completed well over one thousand years earlier? Professor Julio Trebolle Barrera, a member of the international team of editors of the Dead Sea Scrolls, states: “The Isaiah Scroll [from Qumran] provides irrefutable proof that the transmission of the biblical text through a period of more than one thousand years by the hands of Jewish copyists has been extremely faithful and careful.”
THE scroll that Barrera refers to contains the complete book of Isaiah. To date, among over 200 Biblical manuscripts found at Qumran, portions have been identified of every book of the Hebrew Scriptures except the book of Esther. Unlike the Isaiah Scroll, most are represented only by fragments, containing less than one tenth of any given book. The Bible books that were most popular at Qumran were Psalms (36 copies), Deuteronomy (29 copies), and Isaiah (21 copies). These are also the books most frequently quoted in the Christian Greek Scriptures.
Although the scrolls demonstrate that the Bible has not undergone fundamental changes, they also reveal that to some extent there were different versions of Hebrew Bible texts used by Jews in the Second Temple period, each with its own variations. Not all the scrolls are identical to the Masoretic text in spelling or wording. Some are closer to the Greek Septuagint. Previously, scholars thought that the Septuagint’s differences might be the result of mistakes or even deliberate inventions by the translator. Now the scrolls reveal that many of these differences were actually due to variations in the Hebrew text. This may explain some cases in which early Christians quoted Hebrew Scripture texts using wording different from the Masoretic text.—Exodus 1:5; Acts 7:14.
Thus, this treasure trove of Biblical scrolls and fragments provides an excellent basis for studying the transmission of the Hebrew Bible text. The Dead Sea Scrolls have confirmed the value of both the Septuagint and the Samaritan Pentateuch for textual comparison. They provide an additional source for Bible translators to consider for possible emendations to the Masoretic text. In a number of cases, they confirm decisions by the New World Bible Translation Committee to restore Jehovah’s name to places where it had been removed from the Masoretic text.
The scrolls describing the rules and beliefs of the Qumran sect make very clear that there was not just one form of Judaism in the time of Jesus. The Qumran sect had traditions different from those of the Pharisees and the Sadducees. These differences likely led to the sect’s retreating to the wilderness. They incorrectly saw in themselves a fulfillment of Isaiah 40:3 about a voice in the wilderness making the way of Jehovah straight. A number of the scroll fragments refer to the Messiah, whose coming the authors saw as imminent. This is of particular interest because of Luke’s comment that “the people were in expectation” of the Messiah’s coming.—Luke 3:15.
The Dead Sea Scrolls help us to a degree to understand the context of Jewish life during the time that Jesus preached. They provide comparative information for the study of ancient Hebrew and the Bible text. But the text of many of the Dead Sea Scrolls still needs closer analysis. Therefore, new insights may yet be gained. Yes, the greatest archaeological discovery of the 20th century continues to excite both scholars and Bible students as we move along in the 21st century.
The first of the Dead Sea Scroll discoveries occurred in 1947 in Qumran, a village situated about twenty miles east of Jerusalem on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea. A young Bedouin shepherd, following a goat that had gone astray, tossed a rock into one of the caves along the seacliffs and heard a cracking sound: the rock had hit a ceramic pot containing leather and papyrus scrolls that were later determined to be nearly twenty centuries old. Ten years and many searches later, eleven caves around the Dead Sea were found to contain tens of thousands of scroll fragments dating from the third century B.C. to A.D. 68 and representing an estimated eight hundred separate works.
The Dead Sea Scrolls comprise a vast collection of Jewish documents written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, and encompassing many subjects and literary styles. They include manuscripts or fragments of every book in the Hebrew Bible except the Book of Esther, all of them created nearly one thousand years earlier than any previously known biblical manuscripts. The scrolls also contain the earliest existing biblical commentary, on the Book of Habakkuk, and many other writings, among them religious works pertaining to Jewish sects of the time
The legends of what was contained in the Dead Sea Scrolls are far beyond what was actually there. There were no lost books of the Bible or other literature that there was not already other copies of. The vast majority of the Dead Sea Scrolls were simply copies of books of the Old Testament from 250-150 B.C. A copy or portion of nearly every Old Testament book was found in Qumran. There were extra-biblical and apocryphal books found as well, but again, the vast majority of the scrolls were copies of the Hebrew Old Testament. The Dead Sea Scrolls were such an amazing discovery in that the scrolls were in excellent condition and had remained hidden for so long (over 2000 years). The Dead Sea Scrolls can also give us confidence in the reliability of the Old Testament manuscripts since there were minimal differences between the manuscripts that had previously been discovered and those that were found in Qumran. Clearly this is a testament to the way God has preserved His Word down through the centuries, protecting it from extinction and guarding it against significant error.
Recommended Resource: What Are the Dead Sea Scrolls and Why Do They Matter? by David Noel Freedman & Pam Fox Kuhlken.
I hope this isn't your homework assignment.
Here, have a link.
They were found in a cave by the dead sea around 1950 or so. A shepherd kid was pitching stones in the cae and heard a crash and found pottery with scrolls stuffewd inside. Turns out they were from the Essenes from centuries before Jesus.
Significant because the copies of scipture were virtually identical to the Old Testament fragments of today showing how reliable the Old Testament is. ALso giving a view of one of the larger Jewish groups, the essenes, of that day.
I figured you would get answers which showed that some people had an answer which was showing a lack of information. I myself am not an expert on the subject, but at least I know that there are parts of the Old Testament included in that collection.
What I have come to understand is that the Dead Sea Scrolls were removed from the regular traceable line of descendants of scriptures . . . they were out of the loop of what was known as scripture, yet they revealed only very subtle differences in what we already had.
What they did was confirm what we already had concerning what was called the Old Testament or the Jewish Bible, as being accurate. There was no wild change in scripture as was charged of the Bible by it's conspiring scholars.
There are books out now with translations of most of the texts that were found. Some people seem to believe that the texts were the Bible, but it's actually a collection of many religious texts, only some of which are from the Bible.
EDIT: Most of the charges of changed Biblical texts refer to problems with New Testament texts. I'm not aware of any controversy over Old Testament texts, so the Dead Sea Scrolls prove nothing about the controversy at all.
Among other things, the Dead Sea Scrolls contained portions of copies of the Bible much older than any manuscripts that we had. There was a portion of the Bible book of Isaiah that dated to 200 BCE, 1100 years older than the oldest one they had before that. And it was almost identical to the one we had, even though it had been copied for 1,100 years between them. This showed that the Bible wasn't "passed down by word of mouth and changed," as you often hear. Sir Frederick Kenyon, a director of the British Museum, confirmed this in a book, the title of this I have forgotten, from around 1950.
Best regards,
Michael
The Dead Sea Scrolls were placed their by the ancient Essenes who exposed Roman captivity in the 70 ad invasion of ancient Jerusalem. The Dead Sea Scrolls prove the name of the Creator of all things to be Yahweh. It also proves that the Messiah according to Isaiah 7:14 was a regular human because his mother is called a Hebrew word of Alma which means 'young woman' not virgin. It also proves that the titles 'God' and 'Lord' aren't names of Yahweh because Yahweh appears 7,000 times in these ancient Scrolls found a the Qumran desert caves. The ancient Hebrews worshiped Yahweh. The Dead Sea Scrolls were also found along with the Nag Hammdi. The Nag Hammadi proves that the gospels are nothing but something that was based on sun worship and that it was not a story based on foretold Messiah.
the dead sea scrolls
The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in eleven caves along the northwest shore of the Dead Sea between the years 1947 and 1956. The area is 13 miles east of Jerusalem and is 1300 feet below sea level. The mostly fragmented texts, are numbered according to the cave that they came out of. They have been called the greatest manuscript discovery of modern times. See a Dead Sea Scroll Jar.
"Probably the Dead Sea Scrolls have had the greatest Biblical impact. They have provided Old Testament manuscripts approximately 1,000 years older than our previous oldest manuscript. The Dead Sea Scrolls have demonstrated that the Old Testament was accurately transmitted during this interval. In addition, they provide a wealth of information on the times leading up to, and during, the life of Christ.
why are they so important?……..Ever since they were discovered in 1947, the Dead Sea Scrolls have proved to be one of the most important finds ever, informing mankind of their origins and, since they contain a 2000-year-old incarnation of the Bible, charting religious and sociological history. Learn how archaeologists found them and how the entire world reacted to their discovery, and watch a reenactment that purports to trace just how the documents ended up where they
did.
I am sending some links..
wow thanks for the question!!
I hope this was helpfu!!
peace
trust