Alrighty, let’s jump right into things.
Yesterday I told you that in terms of accuracy, the Greek Septuagint is widely regarded to be far superior than the Hebrew Masoretic texts in terms of accuracy.
That conclusion seems to make sense because the Greek Septuagint was put together a good 1000 years before the Masoretic texts…actually during the time of Yeshua.
And Yeshua himself quoted from the Septuagint.
Now the question I left you hanging with was “what if there are even OLDER manuscripts than the Septuagint written in God’s original native tongue Hebrew?”
That would just change everything, wouldn’t it.
Well, it turns out, that just happens to be the case.
Because in the 1940’s the Dead Sea scrolls were discovered.
And during this expedition a Hebrew manuscript was discovered that was written at about the same time as our oldest Greek manuscripts…
In other words, dating all the way back to around 100 B.C.
And you know what was discovered?
There’s hardly any difference between the Hebrew Masoretic texts written in 1000 AD and these Hebrew scrolls unearthed at Qumran written around 100 BC.
And you know what else we found out?
The Septuagint isn’t quite as accurate compared to the original Hebrew as we thought…
Which means we should give more authority to the Hebrew manuscripts over the Greek Septuagint.
There’s a major takeaway to be extracted from all of this.
The creation of the books of Samuel and Kings didn’t come about in a manner that was different than how the other books in our Bibles were created…
INCLUDING THE NEW TESTAMENT!
So we can safely ignore a good majority of those modern scholars (mostly gentile Christians) who accuse the books of Samuel and Kings as being so corrupt they’re of little value.
Over and out homies.
P.S. Incidentally, a couple of years ago when I visited Israel, I went to the place where the ORIGINAL Dead Sea Scrolls were being housed.
They were encased in bullet-proof glass…
But you know what really bothered me?
We weren’t allowed to take pictures.
There were like these signs all over the place saying something like “Photo-taking Strictly Prohibited”.
During my trip, I was trigger finger happy and taking pictures of everything and anything that caught my fancy…
And believe me when you’re in Jerusalem for the first time, there’s a lot of things you wanna capture on film.
Heck, I was even taking pictures of the Hebrew Kellogg’s cornflake boxes in the local supermarket (lol).
But I wasn’t allowed to take a photo of one of the most revolutionary Biblical discoveries of our era.
It was killing me…
And I was severely tempted to break the law in order to get a quick snap shot.
But there was a security guard in the room eyeing me with my iPhone in my hand…
And I imagined there were probably surveillance cameras set up everywhere monitoring the area 24/7….
So even if I did manage to sneak a quick snapshot, I had nightmares about being accosted by a Mossad agent or someone knocking on my hotel room door in the middle of the night.
So in the end, I figured better safe than sorry…
And didn’t take a picture of the scrolls sitting behind the bullet proof glass.
But I was so sorely tempted to.
Nice post. I think Isaiah was the most intact find and it matched so well with the Masoreitc.
Also interesting for comparison is the Samaritan Pentateuch, which matches even more closely with the DSS than the Masoretic.
To address the picture taking of the scolls, it might have to do with the fact that most people use their flash and the constant exposure to the flashing of the scrolls (not the type where you have an old man in a raincoat) would eventually destroy the ink that was left on the parchment.
As for the Septuagint, it can’t possibly be as accurate as the Hebrew because the Greeks didn’t have the same cultural and religious beliefs as Judaism, so linguistically they couldn’t express ideas such as a single God, or a God that was compassionate and forgiving. Their gods were not much more than supernaturally powerful beings with the same emotional instability as humans.
For example, the name for Yeshua ha maschiach (which in the Hebrew means “God’s salvation, the anointed one”) was a transliteration of his name (Iesous sounds like Yeshua), which when latinized became Jesus, and since there was no cultural or religious belief in an anointed one, they used the term cristos, which was rubbing of oil on a shield. When cristos was latinized, it became Christ.
So, if just the name of the Messiah couldn’t be translated into Greek correctly, how could the entire Tanakh?
A lot of the Dead Sea Scrolls were revealed to be fake. Perhaps they’re all fake. That might be why you weren’t allowed to take photos of them.
Good news –
about 70 fragments are modern forgeries (16 confirmed so far) and about 100,000 fragments – the original finds – are authentic.
If you are looking for fake, try my grandmother’s marshmallow cranberry salad. Tastes like a fluffy whipped-cream-flavored hologram 🙂
Who revealed them to be fake? I’ve never seen any reports of that.
The Museum of the Bible in Washington DC had 16 fragments of the DSS which were some of a newer find of DSS first hitting the market like 20 years ago. Their provenance was questionable so the museum hired the German Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing to analyze the scrolls. Between 2018 and 2020 it was announced all 16 were forgeries on ancient leather (vellum). They have been removed from display (see Wikipedia, National Geographic, news sites).
There were 70 or so fragments in the “newer find” of DSS, so they are all presumed forged at this point. As far as I’m aware, the older finds have stood up to scrutiny.
The ones referred to in *this post* that validated the Masoretic text were older finds.
Thank you.