The Dead Sea Scrolls
n 1946, Bedouin teenagers were tending their goats and sheep near the ancient settlement of Qumran, located on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea in what is now known as the West Bank. One of the young shepherds tossed a rock into an opening on the side of a cliff and was surprised to hear a shattering sound. He and his companions later entered the cave and found a collection of large clay jars, seven of which contained leather and papyrus scrolls. The find was brought to an antiquities dealer, which then resulted in archaeologists searching the cave and unearthing tens of thousands of scroll fragments spread out between eleven caves. Together these fragments make up about 800 manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible. This discovery, known as the Dead Sea Scrolls, resulted in the greatest archaeological find of the 20th century dating the manuscripts from 200BC – 70AD. These now are the oldest Hebrew manuscripts extant.
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Qumran Caves
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Before 1946, the oldest Hebrew manuscript we had was the Aleppo Codex, dating back to the 10th century. Now we have scrolls dating back nearly 1,100 years previous. How do these two documents compare? The Masoretic text was always the standard for our Old Testament. William Tyndale and Martin Luther both used the Masoretic text to translate the Old Testament, and the birth of our King James Bible as a result. But now that we have new documents to compare, will we find new information that will contradict hundreds of years of theology? Absolutely not! The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls only strengthened the authenticity of the Masoretic text. For example, one of the best finds from the Qumran caves was the discovery of the Great Isaiah Scroll; the entire book of Isaiah, intact and preserved perfectly. The text was studied and compared with the Masoretic text. The only major difference between the Aleppo Codex and the Dead Sea Scrolls, in general, is the addition of the vowel pointings, called nikkudot in Hebrew. These pointings provide the vowel sounds that are not present in the Hebrew language and were inserted into the text to standardize the pronunciation of the Hebrew words. This was the purpose of the Masoretes. In fact, mesorah specifically means the diacritic markings of the text of the Hebrew Scriptures. Therefore, it is agreeable that the only differences between these two manuscripts, dated 1,100 years apart, is the vowel markings. What a wonderful show of the strength and preservation of the Word of God. The original book of Isaiah was written in 700BC, and the Great Isaiah Scroll found in the first Qumran cave is dated at 200BC. Therefore, only 500 years separate this scroll from the original. Which means this Dead Sea Scroll could quite possibly be only 2 or 3 renditions from the original authorship. This is solid evidence, proving the Old Testament, we read today, is in fact the preserved written Word of God.