Basic HTML Version
Significance of The
DEAD SEA
SCROLLS
Sorne
have claimecl the ancient Deacl Sea Scrolls
alter the text of the Olcl Testament. Reacl this article,
showing the importance of the Deacl Sea Scrolls ancl
what they really prove about the Olcl Testament text.
by
Lester L. Grabbe
1
T A!.L BEGAN
in
the spring
of
1947 ...
Muhammed adh-Dhib, a
fifteen-year-old Bedouin, stumbled
onto the first scrolls on the north–
west shores of the Dead Sea.
According to one story, he threw
a stone at a runaway goat. The
stone landed in a cave, and thc boy
heard the tinkle of breaking pottery.
This led him to the manuscripts.
When scholars examined the manu–
scripts they were astonished.
Wrong Assumption Made
But what caused Bíblica! arcbae–
ologists to leap for
joy
when news of
the Dead Sea Scrolls spread? The
cea–
son was clear. Valuable new informa–
tion was now available in the field of
Jewish studies. More important, here
was background material for the study
of the Old Testament Biblical text
itself.
Previous to the Dead Sea Scrolls dis–
covery, the earliest dated Hebrew text
of what is commonly called the Old
Testament carne from the early 10th
century of· the present era. Now scholars
posscssed manuscript material about
1
000 years older - even though some
of the books of the Hebrew Bible are
represented only by fragments.
The Revised Standard Version, pub–
Jished in 1951, madc use of sorne of the
earlicr finds in the Dead Sea Scrolls. A
number of textual "emendations" were
put into the RSV on the basis of the
variant readings in sorne of the Scrolls.
Leading textual critics for years had
proclaimed the late origin of the tradi–
tional Hebrew tcxt - also referrcd to
as the
MaJoretic
-
sometimcs spelled
Massoretic. (Most older English trans–
lations, including the King James "Old
Testament," are based on the Maso–
rctic.) These critics had concluded that
this "received text'' needed to be cor–
rected - that many inaccuracies had
crept in over the centuries. Some had
begun to rely for their emendations on