The story of the Dead Sea Scrolls is a rich one. Their alignment with other, much older, biblical manuscripts further established that under God’s protective hand, His inspired words, which were spoken and written by those He used to originally make up the Old Testament, have been preserved. The conclusion: The Old Testament can be trusted as the Word of God.
Over the years, there have been some common questions about the Dead Sea Scrolls that have appeared repeatedly as it is a topic people can get easily confused about. Here, we provide some answers that can offer some helpful clarity.
When were they found?
The scrolls were discovered by a group of teenage shepherds in 1947 within the caves of the Qumran (located on the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea in the Judean Desert).
What did they contain?
They proved to be of immeasurable significance. Now called the Dead Sea Scrolls, many of them turned out to be sacred biblical scrolls. The age of these artifacts sets them apart with a unique authority to aid in the answering of the age-old question – “Has the Bible been altered over the centuries?” More specifically, has the Old Testament been changed? These resilient documents, made of parchment and other ancient materials, are arguably the oldest surviving sacred biblical scrolls on record.
How did they survive over the years?
The conditions in the cave provided a perfect environment to preserve the scrolls, where other copies had been exposed to elements that caused them to deteriorate over time. Whether they were stored there for protection from the elements, or the Romans, which destroyed the settlement around the year AD 73, their preservation made them a monumental find.
Related: How Can I Believe Christianity?
Are they the only Old Testament manuscripts we have and can they be trusted?
While the Dead Sea Scrolls were an incredibly significant discovery, they are not the only manuscripts we have to support the preservation of the Old Testament over the centuries. In fact, before their discovery, the Nash papyrus fragments, the copies of Masoretic Text, and a list of other lesser-known Old Testament manuscripts containing Hebrew or Aramaic Scripture were in existence.
The Masoretic Text is the Hebrew text of the complete Old Testament. The Masorete scribes were dedicated to restoring the Old Testament text after the Babylonian captivity. The text was named after them and serves as an authoritative text regarding the accuracy of the Old Testament we have now compared to what was originally written.
Perhaps the most known fact about the Dead Sea Scrolls is that they contained a nearly complete copy of Isaiah. According to The Israel Museum, “This copy of Isaiah is one of the oldest of the Dead Sea Scrolls, some one thousand years older than the oldest manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible known to us before the scrolls’ discovery. The version of the text is generally in agreement with the Masoretic text.”11
When it comes to preservation of the original text, there is simply no other ancient historical document from around the time of the writing of the Old Testament that has the same level of reliability. That is a powerful claim.
How old are the Dead Sea Scrolls?
The oldest of the Dead Sea Scrolls are dated around or a little earlier than 250 BC. Despite the time span between the writing of the earlier texts of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Masoretic Text, the Dead Sea Scrolls give evidence that conservative, careful copying was present at the time of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which is evidence of the reverence of those who copied it.
What can we conclude?
We can have confidence that the text of the Old Testament has been preserved. While the New Testament is outside of the scope, we can have this confidence about the entirety of Scripture.
The passing down of the Old Testament manuscripts between centuries and people groups was so well preserved that we can say with a high probability that what was originally written by the Old Testament authors is the same as what we have today.
Looking for a deeper dive into the issue of biblical reliability? Order your copy of Josh McDowell’s Evidence that Demands a Verdict.
- http://dss.collections.imj.org.il/isaiah
Photographs by Ardon Bar Hama, author of original document is unknown., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
