The Shocking Secret in the Dead Sea Scrolls

There is something hidden among the Dead Sea Scrolls so disturbing that scholars are keeping it secret. Have you heard that kind of claim before? I would almost be surprised if you had not. So many outrageous claims have been made about the Dead Sea Scrolls. Here are just a few:
Jesus was a member of the community that produced the scrolls (perhaps even an alien from space).
There are scrolls that are being kept secret, because they disprove the essential claims of Christianity.
One of the scrolls points to the Egyptian Pharaoh Akhnaton as the true founder of Judaism.

At least the title got your attention, didn’t it? While the more extravagant claims concerning the Dead Sea Scrolls have little connection with reality, the fact remains that the Scrolls are extremely important in understanding the development of the Bible, particularly the Old Testament.

The first scrolls (according to the story) were found in a cave near the Dead Sea by a shepherd boy in 1947. From there they eventually ended up in the hands of scholars who recognized their tremendous value. The story has been ongoing since that time, but space is too limited to go into the history today. First a little background.

So far more than 900 scrolls have been discovered in eleven caves near the Dead Sea. Although there is still some debate, the consensus of scholars connects the scrolls to the ruins of a settlement near Qumran, which was believed to have been inhabited by a Jewish splinter group called the Essenes. So it was likely the Essenes who produced the scrolls and hid them in the caves during the first Jewish revolt, before their society was destroyed by the Roman army in AD 68.

The scrolls are copied on vellum, papyrus, and one scroll on pure copper. It is called (of all things) the Copper Scroll. They are written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. The scrolls date from the second century BC to AD 68. For our purposes their significance comes from the fact that 231 (or 233) scrolls are copies of Biblical texts, making them earlier than our previous old testament manuscripts by a thousand years. In fact at least a portion of every Old Testament book is represented in the Dead Sea Scrolls with the exception of the book of Esther.

So what do these scrolls tell us about the accuracy of the text of the Old Testament? Do they confirm its accuracy or do they reveal that over the centuries the text of the Old Testament has been changed so as to be unrecognizable? Let me give you my conclusion first. The scrolls basically show that, for the most part, the text of the Old Testament is very close to what we have today. At the same time, there are some questions that arise from studying the scrolls. Obviously, there is little space here to do more than a summary study. Let me give a couple of examples that illustrate the points.

Perhaps the most famous of the Dead Sea Scrolls is the Isaiah Scroll, part of which is pictured below.

Isaiah A Scroll from the Dead Sea Scrolls, Chapter 53

This picture shows Isaiah 53, and it is virtually identical to the Masoretic Text.

Actually, there are two Isaiah scrolls, Isaiah A, which is virtually complete and dates from @ 100 BC, and Isaiah B which contains chapters 41-59 and is a little later in date. The Isaiah A scroll was available in time for the translators of the Revised Standard Version published in 1952 to make use of it. They only made thirteen changes from the Masoretic Text based on Isaiah A, none of them significant. At the same time, we need to understand that Isaiah A does represent a third text type. It matches neither the Septuagint (see previous post) nor the Masoretic Text. But let’s understand what we mean by that. There are indeed differences, but they are not major differences. We are not talking about two totally different accounts in the two Isaiah’s.

While that really sounds encouraging for the accuracy of our text, this does not hold true for every one of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Perhaps the most problematic is a scroll of the prophet Jeremiah. Although written in Hebrew, this scroll is in many ways closer to the Septuagint than it is to the Hebrew Masoretic Text. The Septuagint version of Jeremiah differs from the Masoretic Text in two primary ways. First, it is seven chapters shorter than the Masoretic Text, and the remaining text is arranged in a different order. There is not time (and perhaps even less interest) in going into all the details; however, the differences are there. On the other hand, from the reading I have done, it appears that there are fragments of Jeremiah among the Dead Sea Scrolls which are closer to the Masoretic Text. This would mean that two different versions of Jeremiah circulated during Biblical times.

While we cannot be sure why there were two versions, we should recognize that the book of Jeremiah itself says that there were two versions. Chapter 36 of Jeremiah records that king Jehoiakim cut up Jeremiah’s original scroll and burned it. Jeremiah then had his secretary Baruch prepare a second scroll that was longer than the original one. If a copy of the original scroll survived, it might explain why two versions of Jeremiah circulated at the same time.

Ultimately, we cannot say why two versions of Jeremiah exist among the Dead Sea Scrolls. I also feel confident in saying that the Dead Sea Scrolls do not call for any drastic changes in the Old Testament text. They have even less to say about the New Testament text, because (despite some wild claims) the New Testament does not depend on them.

I would like to address one final issue. It has been suggested that Jesus spent some of His “silent years” among the Essenes and that many of His teachings arose from them. I believe this theory is highly unlikely. There are just too many differences. The Essenes were obsessed with ritual purity; Jesus and His disciples often got into trouble for breaking the Sabbath and not following ritual washings. The Essenes would have nothing to do with tax collectors and immoral people. One of Jesus’ apostles (Matthew) was a tax collector, and Jesus was notorious for hanging out with “sinners.” I believe a stronger case could be made that John the Baptist was influenced by the Essenes, or perhaps was an Essene himself; but even that is really conjecture.

The Dead Sea Scrolls are indeed important witnesses, not only to the Bible, but to the culture out of which Christianity arose. We have said virtually nothing about the other documents among the Scrolls, the War Scroll, the Copper Scroll (a treasure map?), or the Teacher of Righteousness and his adversary (the Wicked Priest). These scrolls are perhaps more important than the Biblical scrolls, because of what they tell us of the Essene community and Jewish beliefs around the time Jesus lived. What I find most intriguing is the possibility that more scrolls may be found in that ancient land. That would truly be exciting.