Dead Sea Scrolls and the Modern Bible

I thought this was interesting. I was comparing translations of the Dead Sea Scrolls with a modern translation of the bible. Finding that apart from differences in grammatical structure which is at the translator�s discretion, the Dead Sea Scrolls are identical to the modern bible translations. This shows that the manuscripts used for our modern translations have not been re-written, tampered or �mutilated� over the years as many like to claim.

The conspiracy nature of this thread is that many claim that men and institutions altered the texts for power, politics etc.. This is true in some cases such as the Jehovah�s Witnesses cult and their New World Translation. But as the Dead Sea Scrolls prove this is not the case with our modern translations such as the King James, New King James, New American Standard and others.

I obtained the translations from THE GNOSTIC SOCIETY LIBRARY

I found that the most astonishing translation was the Book of Isaiah. Here is a link for an almost complete manuscript of the book Isaiah, found with the Dead Sea Scrolls. Compare it with a modern translation.
Dead Sea Scroll, Book of Isaiah

As follows is a fragment from the book of Exodus. Following it I added the DSS translation and the modern translation.
Compare the two.




Scroll fragment of Exodus: 6:26-7:19.
This fragment is written in palaeo-Hebrew script, recently redated to c 100BCE.

Exodus 4Q22 (paleo Exodm), Column 1
2 These are that Aaron and Moses to whom
3 the Lord said, Bring out the children of Israel from the land of Egypt according
4 to their armies. These are they which spake to Pharoah king of Egypt to bring out the children of Israel.
5 from Egypt: these are that Moses and Aaron. And it came to pass on the day when the Lord spake
6 unto Moses in the Land of Egypt,
7 That the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, I am the Lord: speak thou unto Pharoah king of Egypt
8 all that I say unto thee. And Moses said before the Lord,
9 Behold, I am of uncircumcised lips, and how shall Pharoah hearken unto me?
10 And the Lord said unto Moses, See, I have made thee a god to Pharoah: and Aaron thy brother shall be
11 thy prophet. Thou shalt speak all that I command thee: and Aaron thy brother shall speak unto
12 Pharoah, that he send the children of Israel out of his land. And I will harden Pharoah's heart
13 and multiply my signs and my wonders in the land of Egypt.

Exod 6:26-7:3 (From a modern translation NKJ)
26 These are the same Aaron and Moses to whom the LORD said, "Bring out the children of Israel from the land of Egypt according to their armies."
27 These are the ones who spoke to Pharaoh king of Egypt, to bring out the children of Israel from Egypt. These are the same Moses and Aaron.
28 And it came to pass, on the day the LORD spoke to Moses in the land of Egypt,
29 that the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, "I am the LORD. Speak to Pharaoh king of Egypt all that I say to you."
30 But Moses said before the LORD, "Behold, I am of uncircumcised lips, and how shall Pharaoh heed me?"

CHAPTER 7

1 So the LORD said to Moses: "See, I have made you as God to Pharaoh, and Aaron your brother shall be your prophet.
2 "You shall speak all that I command you. And Aaron your brother shall speak to Pharaoh, to send the children of Israel out of his land.
3 "And I will harden Pharaoh's heart, and multiply My signs and My wonders in the land of Egypt.

Do you read that language which is put on the scroll? If not how could you truly know. Your just relying on what others think those symbols mean.

Geez anything in supprot of the Bible and people immediately grasp at straws to shoot it down. Look experst have even done this, they are almost perfect translations except of some small grammar errors like he said.

Originally posted by overstanding
Do you read that language which is put on the scroll? If not how could you truly know. Your just relying on what others think those symbols mean.

No offence but thats a really weak argument.
Ancient Hebrew is not a forgotten language, its taught in many Universities around the world. Its not like translating some ancient Aztec Tablet.

I didnt doubt you, I was simply asking you a question to make you arguement more believable to others.

[Edited on 15-4-2004 by overstanding]

It would be really cool if you realised that the Bible that we have today was actually handed down to us in 3 languages.
It would be cooler if you realised that it took the Catholic Church over 50 years to translate the pieces of scroll that have been given to us to look at.
It would be even cooler still if you actually realised that modern translations which you mention are just that - translations.

So you have a translation compared to a translation and you're saying that this proves that the original was right.

i'm going to have to agree with the last two posts. as for the altering of texts and books of the bible, i see it as being altered by the fact that many books have been stricken from the bible in order to save face for teachings and religion.

Originally posted by Leveller
It would be really cool if you realised that the Bible that we have today was actually handed down to us in 3 languages.
It would be cooler if you realised that it took the Catholic Church over 50 years to translate the pieces of scroll that have been given to us to look at.
It would be even cooler still if you actually realised that modern translations which you mention are just that - translations.

So you have a translation compared to a translation and you're saying that this proves that the original was right.

I do realise that the bible was originally written in 3 languages. The old testement in Ancient Hebrew and a little bit of Aramic, and the New Testement in Greek. I don't see why it would be 'really cool' to realise that.

Of course modern translations are translations. Whats your point. You have manuscripts in a different language so they get translated into our language.

Think about it. Its not the translations people have a problem with, its the manuscripts that are being translated. The peoples argument is that the manuscripts used today in modern translations are flawed in their original language because they're only copies passed down generations which could have been altered between copies. But the Dead Sea Scrolls being thousands of years old (untouched) read the same, in the same original language.

So my point is that between the time that the Dead Sea Scrolls were written and the manuscripts used today there were no alterations. The manuscripts used today read the same as the relevant Dead Sea Scrolls in the original Ancient Hebrew.

I'm not claiming that the following is "gospel" truth, but I have read that the Roman empire circa 300AD under the rule of emporor Constantine were still officially worshiping their sun god. Constantine being an astute polititial realised the religeous balance was swaying towards the new religeon of Christianity. He adopted Christianity to the roman culture, but adapted it to suit his needs. In these times religeon was a powerful tool for controlling the populous, and the changes he made facilitated the control he desired, and hence Catholicism was born. A large quantity of the new testement was lost and the gnostic gospels and dead sea scrolls contain towards 100 gospels rather than the common four we know today...

The major point being made here is that the popular misconception being spread about that the modern translations do not adhere to the earliest manuscripts is false. That means that the modern Bible is trustworthy and can be believed, word for word...the only exception being the words "...and honor the King" added to the OT version by King James's translators, and a portion of Matthew Chapter 18 which was added at (I think it was) The Council of Nicea--but this addition is often notated as such in many modern translations.

In short, the very fact that the Bible HAS NOT BEEN ADULTERATED after millenia is more support for its divine authorship and protection.

Have you ever played that game in a room full of people where one person whispers a sentence into the ear of the person next to them, and then they whisper it to the next person, and so on, until the last person's statement is announced publicly--and routinely it is nothing like the original statement??

That should help you understand how miraculous it is that our Bible has come down to us with such amazing accuracy after so many centuries have intervened.

I can see what you're saying, the original message may not be lost in the bible, if one reads between the lines and sees the true message. The thing I can't swallow is the way religeon is portrayed. For me religeon is universal, it gives people a guideline of how to live and how to treat other people. However the intrinsic guilt built into modern Christianity especially Catholicism makes me dispair when compared to the original intent of Christ whether he is the son of God or not. A huge quantity of information about the life of Jesus especially with regards to the significance of Mary Magdelane to him has been left out of misconstrued. If this wasn't the case then the reason for the Priory of Sion is negated.

I realise religion is a touchy subject with a lot of people, and I'm not saying, that what I'm saying is truth, but through reading and research the huge effort made by the vatican to conseal finds such as the Dead Sea Scrolls, leads me to believe the information within them does not always concur with their current doctrine.

You left out some very important information. Within the scrolls there is additional material that's not found in the OT of today. That shows that parts have been left out. The book of esther isn't represented in the fragments either. Prophecies by Ezekiel and Jeremiah not found in the bible are also found in the scrolls. So who decided which one was correct? You can't use evidence that the DSS supports modern day bible and then forget that it contains extra material that shows perhaps things were deleted from the bible.
Matthew 18 isn't the only part of the NT that was added. Its possible that the first two chapters weren't there originally either. There were divisions within the Jewish and Gentile christians so its seems plausible that they did indeed change things to suite themselves
The DSS does show the similarities of the translations. However, it also beckons the question why were certain things removed?

Excuse me, it was in fact, the last few verses of Mark Chapter 16 (9:20) that were appended later, not Matthew 18--my bad....sorry for my confusion on that point.

You either the Bible is the Holy, inspired Word of God or you don't. You can not be empirically driven towards or against faith in God or his word. I beleive that every word written in the Bible by the original authors was inspired directly by the Holy Spirit, and that each word is the inherent, infallible word of God...If that makes me a fundamentalist...so be it.

It is possible (but only remotely so, IMO) that certain fragments in the DS Scrolls were not included in the final canon of the Scripture as were many other candidates for inclusion such as the "Apocrypha" etc. That does not in anyway deny the vallidity of what was included.

I concur, the validity of the contents of the bible is not what I'm debating. Its just interesting to see the bigger picture sometimes. The omissions speak louder than the contents of things sometimes. Just take modern politics - what they don't say to the general public is usually the most pertinent information that we should know about!

This shows that the manuscripts used for our modern translations have not been re-written, tampered or �mutilated� over the years as many like to claim.

Well, perhaps it shows that what is on the scrolls matches with what we have in the modern Bible. But there are two points to remember:

1. This doesn't prove that the 'writings' weren't changed from the original until the scrolls were written. It just shows that the scrolls and the Bible had the same source. I have studied the Hebrew Bible and what is interesting is that the scriptures were transmitted orally for a long time before the were finally written down, several centuries BC. It will be very hard to prove that even those first writings didn't experience some alterations from the original. The best we can hope to show is that the writings we have now match the first recordings, but we can't show that the writings we have now match the original oral words.

2. The scrolls don't have everything in our modern Bible (and have some things that the modern Bible doesn't have). So we can only use the scrolls to compare some things. Of course there's no New Testament in the DSS, and we don't have the complete OT.

Good point piboy, its always good to keep things in perspective. Especially when talking about writings that thousands of years old. Most opinions even those based on facts are conjecture, due to the fact that none of us where there and nobody can vouch for the integrity of any of the documents.

Interesting topic though...

This would all be great if the Bible were a complete work and it hadn't been changed so many times over history.
The Bible that you have today is totally different from the ones predecessing it.

I have a Parrallel Bible. On the left hand of the page is the King James Version, on the right a 19th century revision. On every page there are differences in the texts!!!!

And has anyone here actually studied how the King James Bible came about and why?
There has been so much that has been changed, altered and edited that to deny this is absolute folly.

Even the pastoral Letters of Paul are known to be blatant forgeries. There's hardly a serious scholar in the world who doesn't admit to their being added later in Paul's name.

members.aol.com...

Even if you go on the Chinese whispers theory - doesn't this mean that things have been changed? I can't believe that this was actually used as an excuse to give the Bible credibility!!!

The fact that the Old Testament was written during a time of war and the New Testament written in a time of occupation and later uncertainty means that political editing is found all over the Bible - just take a look at the Book of Habbukuk for an example.

And it hasn't even been mentioned the Bible has also been edited to accomodate it's origins in older religions.

The Bible not edited? Yeah. And the Moon is made of cheese and the Earth is flat.

www.newgenevacenter.org...


[Edited on 15-4-2004 by Leveller]

Originally posted by StationsCreation
This shows that the manuscripts used for our modern translations have not been re-written, tampered or �mutilated� over the years as many like to claim.

I wish I could give you an applause for this thread. This is the most important religious discovery ever posted in �Conspiracies in Religion & Spiritualism� in my opinion. It�s beyond interpretation or speculation of the bible, its irrefutable proof that the Old Testament remains the same as it was 2000 years ago and it hasn�t been changed by man to promote someone�s agenda as some argue. Thank you��..

The Dead Sea Scrolls weren't a complete Bible-as-we-know-it-today and also included material that is NOT in the modern Bible:

www.usc.edu...

Hunt up the Testimonia if you want to see what those people thought the Messiah would be like (five verses, not 300) :
www.usc.edu...

The Orion Center is one of the more highly regarded sites on the Dead Sea Scrolls:
orion.mscc.huji.ac.il...

I understand that we have other books that aren�t included in the modern day Old Testament but that isn�t the argument. Many people argue that the words, verses, chapters and books have been deceptively and purposely changed by means of the translation to modern languages to advance a subversive agenda. This is obviously not the case. The text found in the Dead Sea Scrolls identically match the text we read in the modern bible.