Do the Dead Sea Scrolls...

tenyearsafter

Sorry...I got launched into cyberspace before posting!!

Anyway, I was just curious to know what the thoughts are out there regarding the Dead Sea Scrolls validating the current translations of the Bible. Since there is considerable discussion on here regarding the Bible, its origins, fallability, etc., I would be curious to hear how our various camps weigh in on this subject?

Thanks in advance for your comments!

Band on the Run

While I was a student at Columbia, one of the translators who actually physically opened the Scrolls, came to my class to speak. He was fascinated. His ego was quite intact to say the least. I don't recall that they validated the Witness views. Frankly, I don't spend time trying to refute Witness doctrine. If I ever had a guaranteed audience of educated Witnesses, I might. No one listens to what you say anyway! Robotic is the word that comes to my mind. I had to read the canoncial Greek Scriptures, the Gnostic scriptures avail. then, and some of the Dead Sea Scrolls. I kept calling back home excitedly to report that the Witnesses were wrong on a host of scriptures. Something I never realized until I read books as a whole.

My father was a Bethelite with a hatred of Roman Catholics. He spent countless hours refuting Catholic doctrine. His employer came very close to firing him. The wives of his co-workers would call my Mom and beg her to stop him. The men were having panic attacks. Finally, he was overjoyed. Somehow a former Catholic seminarian was available at work to dispute. My father admitted in short order that the Society was wrong and the seminarian was right.

Have you come across Theodore Gaster in your studies. He was chair of the Religion Department. What an imposing figure!

tenyearsafter

Thanks for the comments Band. I haven't run across Gaster, but I certainly will look him up.

I wasn't really looking to validate the JW viewpoint because I certainly don't buy into that...as always, there are kernels of truth buried in piles of biased doctrine. I know that most of the Christian and Jewish world believe that the Scrolls prove that the Bible has stayed intact and unchanged throughout the centuries and by inference proves its inspiration. I was interested in hearing whether those that have done serious studies (unfortunately, I don't count myself among that number!) have found contrary information on the subject. Scholars?

behemot

The Dead Sea Scrolls (DDS) highlight a whole lot of textual problems with the Hebrew Scriptures. The texts of the DDS are around 1000 years older than the Hebrew text (the “Masoretic Text” = MT) upon which modern translations are based. In the light of the DSS the MT appears now to be only a late and arbitrary lineage of text, the survivor of an earlier, fully uncontrolled, variety of text.

The DDS have destroyed the reassuring conviction that the traditional Hebrew Bible was already accepted as such when Jesus and Paul were still alive.

Many of the Qumran texts belong to the text lineage whence eventually the Masorets drew on; others didn’t, so that we are reminded of the textual variety that was still possible between the last century bCE and the second century CE.

For instance, certain scrolls contain a different version of the book of Jeremiah (shorter than the “canonical” one), a different text of Samuel; two different books of Isaiah; a manipulated text of Ecclesiastes; and so forth.

To make a long story short, the DDS suggest that we don’t have any “original” Scripture and that any research for an “original” has to die off around 200 b.C.E., in an irreconcilable textual plurality.

To know more about the subject I suggest this book:

http://www.amazon.com/Unauthorized-Version-Truth-Fiction-Bible/dp/0679744061

bohm

behemot: Thanks for the link to that book!

ProdigalSon

Rather than supporting the Bible, I would say that because the Dead Sea Scrolls covered the entire first century and never even once mention Jesus OR his disciples, they're just a BIT damaging!

I mean, Qumran was something like 13 miles from Jerusalem, and somehow they missed the earthquake and the sky turning black when Jesus died! If I was an Orthodox Christian I wouldn't even MENTION the Dead Sea Scrolls and just pray that they go back into whatever cave they came out of....

bohm

Joey Jo-Jo

a lot is missing from the dss

tenyearsafter

behemot...thanks for the link!

I appreciate everyone's comments...I am going to look deeper into this as I am interested in how the DSS can continue to be the "gold standard" for proving the Bible to Christians and Jews, yet lends itself to interesting questions as those raised in the above comments.

I would love to hear from Leolaia on this one!

Do the Dead Sea Scrolls...

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