OLD TESTAMENT MANUSCRIPT EVIDENCE

[Josh McDowell, 'EVIDENCE THAT DEMANDS A VERDICT', Thomas Nelson, HERE'S LIFE PUBLISHERS, San Bernadino, Ca, 1972, pp. 52-60]:

THE BIBLIOGRAPHICAL TEST FOR THE RELIABILITY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

"In the case of the O.T. we do not have the abundance of close MS authority as in the N.T. Until the recent discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the oldest complete extant Hebrew MS was around 900 A.D. This made a time gap of 1,300 years (Hebrew O.T. completed about 400 B.C.).

[Josh McDowell, 'THE NEW EVIDENCE THAT DEMANDS A VERDICT', Thomas Nelson, HERE'S LIFE PUBLISHERS, San Bernadino, Ca, 1999, p. 89]:

If no other evidence were available, the case for the fidelity of the Masoretic Text could be brought to rest with confidence based upon textual comparisons and an understanding of the extraordinary Jewish scribal system. But with the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, beginning in 1947, there is almost overwhelming substantiation of the received Hebrew text of the Masoretes. Critics of the Masoretic Text charged that the manuscripts were few and late. Through the Dead Sea Scrolls, early manuscript fragments provide a check on nearly the whole Old Testament. Those checks date about a thousand years before the Great Masoretic manuscripts of the tenth century. Before the discoveries in the Cairo Geniza and the Dead Sea caves, the Nash Papyrus (a fragment of the Ten Commandments and Shema, Deut. 6:4-9), dated between 150 and 100 B.C., was the only known scrap of the Hebrew text dating from before the Christian era.

With the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, a number of O.T. manuscripts have been found which scholars date before the time of Christ.

When the facts are known and compared, there is an overwhelming abundance of reasons for believing that the MSS we possess are trustworthy. We shall see, as Sir Frederic Kenyon put it, that 'the Christian can take the whole Bible in his hand and say without fear or hesitation that he holds in it the true Word of God, handed down without essential loss from generation to generation throughout the centuries.'

First, in order to see the uniqueness of the Scripture in its reliability, one needs to examine the extreme care in which the copyists transcribed the O.T. MSS.

[Josh McDowell, 'THE NEW EVIDENCE THAT DEMANDS A VERDICT', Thomas Nelson, HERE'S LIFE PUBLISHERS, San Bernadino, Ca, 1999, p. 73]:

History of the Old Testament Text

Rabbi Aquiba, second century A.D., with a desire to produce an exact text, is credited with saying that 'the accurate transmission (Masoreth) of the text is a fence for the Torah.' (Harrison, IOT, 211) In Judaism, a succession of scholars was charged with standardizing and preserving the biblical text, fencing out all possible introduction of error:

· The Sopherim (from Hebrew meaning 'scribes') were Jewish scholars and custodians of the text between the fifth and third centuries B.C.

· The Zugoth ('pairs' of textual scholars) were assigned to this task in the second and first centuries B.C.

· The Tannaim ('repeaters' or 'teachers') were active until A.D. 200. In addition to preserving the Old Testament text, the work of Tannaim can be found in the Midrash ('textual interpretation'), Tosefta ('addition'), and Talmud ('instruction'), the latter of which is divided into Mishnah ('repetitions') and Gemara ('the matter to be learned'). The Talmud gradually was compiled between A.D. 100 and A.D. 500. It was natural that the Tannaim would preserve the Hebrew Bible, since their work had to do with compiling several centuries of rabbinic teaching based on the biblical text.

· The Talmudists (A.D. 100-500) Geisler and Nix explain the second scribal tradition, extending from about 400 B.C. to almost A.D. 1000:

'Following the first period of Old Testament scribal tradition, the period of the Sopherim (c. 400 B.C. - c. A.D. 200), there appeared a second, the Talmudic period (c. A.D. 100-c. 500), which was followed by the better-known Masoretic tradition (c. 500 - c. 950). Ezra worked with the first of these groups, and they were regarded as the Bible custodians until after the time of Christ. Between A.D. 100 and 500, the Talmud (instruction, teaching) grew up as a body of Hebrew civil and canonical law based on the Torah. The Talmud basically represents the opinions and decisions of Jewish teachers from about 300 B.C. to A.D. 500, and it consists of two main divisions: the Mishnah and the Gemara.' (Geisler, GIB, 306).

During this period a great deal of time was spent cataloging Hebrew civil and canonical law. The Talmudists had quite an intricate system for transcribing synagogue scrolls.

"Thus far from regarding an older copy of the Scriptures as more valuable, the Jewish habit has been to prefer the newer, as being the most perfect and free from damage." (Sir Frederic Kenyon).

[Josh McDowell, 'THE NEW EVIDENCE THAT DEMANDS A VERDICT', Thomas Nelson, HERE'S LIFE PUBLISHERS, San Bernadino, Ca, 1999, p. 89, (cont.)]:

Samuel Davidson describes some of the disciplines of the Talmudists in regard to the Scriptures. These minute regulations... are as follows:

'[1] A synagogue roll must be written on the skins of clean animals

[2] prepared for the particular use of the synagogue by a Jew.

[3] These must be fastened together with strings taken from clean animals.

[4] Every skin must contain a certain number of columns, equal throughout the entire codex.

[5] The length of each column must not extend over less than 48 or more than 60 lines; and the breadth must consist of thirty letters.

[6] The whole copy must be first-lined; and if three words be written without a line, it is worthless.

[7] The ink should be black, neither red, green, nor any other colour, and be prepared according to a definite recipe.

[8] An authentic copy must be the exemplar, from which the transcriber ought not in the least deviate.

[9] No word or letter, not even a yod, must be written from memory, the scribe not having looked at the codex before him...

[10] Between every consonant the space of a hair or thread must intervene;

[11] between every new parashah, or section, the breadth of nine consonants;

[12] between every book, three lines.

[13] The fifth book of Moses must terminate exactly with a line; but the rest need not do so.

[14] Besides this, the copyist must sit in full Jewish dress,

[15] wash his whole body,

[16] not begin to write the name of God with a pen newly dipped in ink,

[17] and should a king address him while writing that name he must take no notice of him.'

Davidson adds that 'the rolls in which these regulations are not observed are condemned to be buried in the ground or burned; or they are banished to the schools, to be used as reading-books.'

Why don't we have more old MSS? The very absence of ancient MSS, when the rules and accuracies of the copyists are considered, confirms the reliability of the copies we have today.

Gleason Archer, in comparing the manuscript variations of the Hebrew text with pre-Christian literature such as the Egyptian Book of the Dead, states that it is amazing that the Hebrew text does not have the phenomenon of discrepancy and MS change of other literature of the same age. He writes:

'Even though the two copies of Isaiah discovered in Qumran Cave 1 near the Dead Sea in 1947 were a thousand years earlier than the oldest dated manuscript previously known (A. D. 980), they proved to be word for word identical with our standard Hebrew Bible in more than 95 percent of the text. The 5 percent of variation consisted chiefly of obvious slips of the pen and variations in spelling. Even those Dead Sea fragments of Deuteronomy and Samuel which point to a different manuscript family from that which underlies our received Hebrew text do not indicate any differences in doctrine or teaching. They do not affect the message of revelation in the slightest.'

The Talmudists were so convinced that when they finished transcribing a MS they had an exact duplicate, that they would give the new copy equal authority.

Frederic Kenyon in Our Bible and the Ancient Manuscripts expands on the above and the destruction of older copies: 'The same extreme care which was devoted to the transcription of manuscripts is also at the bottom of the disappearance of the earlier copies. When a manuscript had been copied with the exactitude prescribed by the Talmud, and had been duly verified, it was accepted as authentic and regarded as being of equal value with any other copy. If all were equally correct, age gave no advantage to a manuscript; on the contrary, age was a positive disadvantage, since a manuscript was liable to become defaced or damaged in the lapse of time. A damaged or imperfect copy was at once condemned as unfit for use.

'Attached to each synagogue was a '''Gheniza,''' or lumber cupboard, in which defective manuscripts were laid aside; and from these receptacles some of the oldest manuscripts now extant have in modern times been recovered. Thus, far from regarding an older copy of the Scriptures as more valuable, the Jewish habit has been to prefer the newer, as being the most perfect and free from damage. The older copies, once consigned to the '''Gheniza,''' naturally perished, either from neglect or from being deliberately burned when the '''Gheniza''' became overcrowded.

'The absence of very old copies of the Hebrew Bible need not, therefore, either surprise or disquiet us. If, to the causes already enumerated, we add the repeated persecutions (involving much destruction of property) to which the Jews have been subject, the disappearance of the ancient manuscripts is adequately accounted for, and those which remain may be accepted as preserving that which alone they profess to preserve - namely, the Massoretic text.' (Kenyon, OBAM, 43).

'Reverence for the Scriptures and regard for the purity of the sacred text did not first originate after the fall of Jerusalem.' (Greebm GIOT).

One can go back as far as Ezra 7:6, 10 where Ezra is said to be 'a ready scribe' (KJV). He was a professional, skilled in the Scripture.

THE MASSORETIC PERIOD (A.D. 500-900)

[Josh McDowell, 'THE NEW EVIDENCE THAT DEMANDS A VERDICT', Thomas Nelson, HERE'S LIFE PUBLISHERS, San Bernadino, Ca, 1999, p. 75]:

The Masoretes were the Jewish scholars who between A.D. 500 and A.D. 950 gave the final form to the text of the Old Testament. The destruction of the temple in A.D. 70, along with the dispersion of the Jews from their land, became a powerful impetus to (1) standardize the consonantal text, and (2) standardize punctuation and the use of vowels to preserve correct vocalization and pronunciation for reading. They were called Masoretics because they preserved in writing the oral tradition (marorah) concerning the correct vowels and accents, and the number of occurrences of rare words of unusual spellings. They received the unpointed (comparable to English without vowels), consonantal text of the Sopherim and inserted the vowel points that gave to each word its exact pronunciation and grammatical form. They even engaged in a moderate amount of textual criticism. Wherever they suspected that the word indicated by the consonantal text was erroneous, they corrected it in a very ingenious way. They left the actual consonants undistrubed, as they had received them from the Sopherim. But they inserted vowel points that belonged to the new word they were substituting for the old, and then inserted the consonants of the new word itself in very small letters in the margin. (Archer, SOT, 63).

There were two major schools or centers of Masoretic activity - each largely independent of the other - the Babylonian and the Palestinian. The most famous Masoretes were the Jewish scholars living in Tiberias in Galilee, Moses ben Asher (with his son Aaron), and Moses ben Naphtali, in the late ninth and tenth centuries. The ben Asher text is the standard Hebrew text today and is best represented by Codex Leningradensis B19 A (L) and the Aleppo Codex.

[Josh McDowell, 'EVIDENCE THAT DEMANDS A VERDICT', Thomas Nelson, HERE'S LIFE PUBLISHERS, San Bernadino, Ca, 1972, pp. 52-60]:

The massoretes (from massora, 'tradition') accepted the laborious job of editing the text and standardizing it. Their headquarters was in Tiberias. The text which the massoretes concluded with is called the 'Massoretic' text. This resultant text had had vowel points added in order to insure proper pronunciation. This Massoretic text is the standard Hebrew text today.

The Masoretes were well disciplined and treated the text 'with the greatest imaginable reverence, and devised a complicated system of safeguards against scribal slips. They counted, for example, the number of times each letter of the alphabet occurs in each book; they pointed out the middle letter of the Pentateuch and the middle letter of the whole Hebrew Bible, and made even more detailed calculations than these. 'Everything countable seems to be counted,' says Wheeler Robinson, and they made up mnemonics by which the various totals might be readily remembered.' [F.F. Bruce, BP, 117]

Sir Frederic Kenyon says: 'Besides recording varieties of reading, tradition, or conjecture, the Massoretes undertook a number of calculations which do not enter into the ordinary sphere of textual criticism. They numbered the verses, words, and letters of every book. They calculated the middle word and the middle letter of each. The enumerated verses which contained all the letters of the alphabet, or a certain number of them; and so on. These trivialities, as we may rightly consider them, had yet the effect of securing minute attention to the precise transmission of the text; and they are but an excessive manifestation of a respect for the sacred Scriptures which in itself deserves nothing but praise. The Massoretes were indeed anxious that not one jot nor tittle, not one smallest letter nor one tiny part of a letter, of the Law should pass away or be lost.' (Kenyon, OBAM, 38).

A factor that runs throughout the above discussion of the Hebrew manuscript evidences is the Jewish reverence for the Scriptures. With respect to the Jewish Scriptures, however, it was not scribal accuracy alone that guaranteed their product. Rather, it was their almost superstitious reverence for the Bible. According to the Talmud, there were specifications not only for the kind of skins to be used and the size of the columns, but the scribe was even required to perform a religious ritual before writing the name of God. Rules governed the kind of ink used, dictated the spacing of words, and prohibited writing anything from memory. The lines - and even the letters - were counted methodically. If a manuscript was found to contain even one mistake it was discarded and destroyed. This scribal formalism was responsible, at least in part, for the extreme care exercised in copying the Scriptures. It was also for this reason that there were only a few manuscripts (because the rules demanded the destruction of defective copies). (Geisler, BECA, 552)

Flavious Josephus, the Jewish historian, [first century] writes: 'We have given practical proof of our reverence for our own Scriptures. For, although such long ages have now passed, no one has ventured either to add, or to remove, or to alter a syllable; and it is an instinct with every Jew, from the day of his birth, to regard them as the decrees of God, to abide by them and, if need be, cheerfully to die for them. Time and again ere now the sight has been witnessed of prisoners enduring tortures and death in every form in the theatres, rather than utter a single word against the laws and the allied documents.' (Josephus, FJAA, as cited in JCW, 179, 180).

Josephus continues by making a comparison between the Hebrew respect for Scripture and the Greek regard for their literature: 'What Greek would endure as much for the same cause? Even to save the entire collection of his nation's writings from destruction he would not face the smallest personal injury. For the Greeks they are mere stories improvised according to the fancy of their authors; and in this estimate even of the older historians they are quite justified, when they see some of their own contemporaries venturing to describe events in which they bore no part, without taking the trouble to seek information from those who know the facts.'

QUOTATIONS AND OBSERVATIONS ON THE RELIABILITY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

Robert Dick Wilson's brilliant observations take the veracity and trustworthiness of Scriptures back to Old Testament times: 'In 144 cases of transliteration from Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian and Moabite into Hebrew and in 40 cases of the opposite, or 184 in all, the evidence shows that for 2300 to 3900 years the text of the proper names in the Hebrew Bible has been transmitted with the most minute accuracy. That the original scribes should have written them with such close conformity to correct philogical principles is a wonderful proof of their thorough care and scholarship; further, that the Hebrew text should have been transmitted by copyists through so many centuries is a phenomenon unequaled in the history of literature.'

Wilson adds: 'There are about forty of these kings living from 2000 B.C. to 400 B.C. Each appears in chronological order '''...with reference to the kings of the same country and with respect to the kings of other countries...no stronger evidence for the substantial accuracy of the Old Testament records could possibly be imagined, than this collection of kings.''' Mathematically, it is one chance in 750,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 that this accuracy is mere circumstance.'

Because of the evidence Wilson concludes:

'The proof that the copies of the original documents have been handed down with substantial correctness for more than 2,000 years cannot be denied. That the copies in existence 2,000 years ago had been in like manner handed down from the originals is not merely possible, but, as we have shown, is rendered probable by the analogies of Babylonian documents now existing of which we have both originals and copies, thousands of years apart, and of scores of papyri which show when compared with our modern editions of the classics that only minor changes of the text have taken place in more than 2,000 years and especially by the scientific and demonstrable accuracy with while the proper spelling of the names of kings and of the numerous foreign terms embedded in the Hebrew text has been transmitted.

F.F. Bruce states that 'the consonantal text of the Hebrew Bible which the Massoretes edited had been handed down to their time with conspicuous fidelity over a period of nearly a thousand years.'

William Green concludes that 'it may safely be said that no other work of antiquity has been so accurately transmitted.'

Concerning the accuracy of the transmission of the Hebrew text, Atkinson, who was Under-Librarian of the library at Cambridge University, says it is 'little short of miraculous.'

Rabbi Aquiba, second century A.D., with a desire to produce an exact text, is credited with saying that 'the accurate transmission (Massoreth) of the text is a fence for the Torah.' "

THE HEBREW TEXT

[Josh McDowell, 'THE NEW EVIDENCE THAT DEMANDS A VERDICT', Thomas Nelson, HERE'S LIFE PUBLISHERS, San Bernadino, Ca, 1999, p. 89]:

Quantity of Manuscripts

Even though the Old Testament does not boast of the same quantity of manuscripts (MSS) as the New Testament, the number of manuscripts available today is quite remarkable. Several reasons have been suggested for the scarcity of early Hebrew manuscripts. The first and most obvious reason is a combination of antiquity and destructibility; two to three thousand years is a long time to expect ancient documents to last. Nonetheless, several lines of evidence support the conclusion that their quality is very good. First, it is important to establish the quantity of manuscripts available. There are several important collections of Hebrew manuscripts today. The first collection of Hebrew manuscripts, made by Benjamin Kennicott (1776-1780) and published by Oxford, listed 615 manuscripts of the Old Testament. Later, Giovannit de Rossi (1784-1788) published a list of 731 manuscripts. The most important manuscript discoveries in modern times are those of the Cairo Geniza (1890s) and the Dead Sea Scrolls (1947 and following years). In the Cairo synagogue attic, a geniza, or storehouse, for old manuscripts was discovered. Two hundred thousand manuscripts and fragments, (Hakle, CG, 13, and Wurthwein, TOT, 25), some ten thousand of which are biblical (Goshen-Gottstein, BMUS, 35), were found.

'Near the end of the nineteenth century, many fragments from the six to eighth centuries were found in an old synagogue in Cairo, Egypt, which had been Saint Michael's Church until A.D. 882. They were found there in a geniza, a storage room where worn or faulty manuscripts were hidden until they could be disposed of properly. This geniza had apparently been walled off and forgotten until its recent discovery. In this small room, as many as 200,000 fragments were preserved, including biblical texts in Hebrew and Aramaic. The bible fragments date from the fifth century A.D. (Dockery, FBI, 162-163).

Of the manuscripts found in the Cairo Geniza, about one-half are now housed at Cambridge University. The rest are scattered throughout the world. Cairo Geniza's authority, Paul Kahle, has identified more than 120 rare manuscripts prepared by the 'Babylonian' group of Masoretic scribes.

The largest collection of Hebrew Old Testament manuscripts in the world is the Second Firkowitch Collection in Leningrad. It contains 1,582 items of the Bible and Masora on parchment (725 on paper), plus 1,200 additional Hebrew manuscript fragments in the Antonin Collection. (Wurthwein, TOT, 23) Kahle contends also that these Antonin Collection manuscripts and fragments are all from the Cairo Geniza. (Kahle, CG, 7). In the Firkowitch Collection are found fourteen Hebrew Old Testament manuscripts from between the years A.D. 929 and A.D. 1121 that originated in the Cairo Geniza.

Cairo Geniza manuscripts are scattered over the world. Some of the better ones in the United States are in the Enelow Memorial Collection at the Jewish Theological Seminary, New York. (Goshen-Gottstein, BMS, 44f).

The British Museum cagalog lists 161 Hebrew Old Testament manuscripts. At Oxford University, the Bodleian Library catalog lists 146 Old Testament manuscripts, each containing a large number of fragments. (Kahle, CF, 5). Goshen-Gottstein estimates that in the United States alone there are tens of thousands of Semitic manuscript fragments, about 5 percent of which are biblical - more than five hundred manuscripts. (Goshen-Gottstein, BMUS, 30).

The most significant Hebrew Old Testament manuscripts date from between the third century B.C. and the fourteenth century A.D. Of these the most remarkable manuscripts are those of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which date from the third century B.C. to the first century A.D. They include one complete Old Testament book (Isaiah) and thousands of fragments, which together represent every Old Testament book except Esther. (Geisler, BECA, 549)....

The Dead Sea Scrolls manuscripts are highly significant because they confirm the accuracy of other manuscripts dated much later. For example, Cairo Codex (A.D. 895) is the earliest Masoretic manuscript prior to the Dead Sea Scrolls discoveries. It is now located in the British Museum. Also called Codex Cairensis, it was produced by the Masoretic Moses ben Asher family and contains both the latter and former prophets. The rest of the Old Testament is missing from it. (Bruce, BP, 115-16).

Codex of the Prophets of Leningrad (A.D. 916) contains Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the twelve minor prophets.

The earliest complete MS of the Old Testament is the Codex Babylonicus Petropalitanus (A.D. 1008) located in Leningrad. It was prepared from a corrected text of Rabbi Aaron ben Moses ben Asher before A.D. 1000. (Geisler, GIB, 250).

Aleppo Codex (A.D. 900+) is an exceptionally valuable manuscript. It once was thought lost, but in 1958 was rediscovered. It did not, however, escape damage. It was partially destroyed in the 1947 riots in Israel. Aleppo Codex was the oldest complete Masoretic manuscript of the entire Old Testament.

British Museum Codex (A.D. 950) contains part of Genesis through Deuteronomy.

Reuchlin Codex of the Prophets (A.D. 1105). This text was prepared by the Masorete ben Naphtali.

This brings up the question of the faithfulness of the transmission of the Bible text. There are numerous types of manuscript errors, which the textual critic may discover in the early manuscripts of the Old Testament... Are these of so serious a nature as to corrupt the message itself, or make it impossible to convey the true meaning? If they are, then God's purpose has been frustrated; He could not convey His revelation so that those of later generations could understand it aright-correctly. If He did not exercise a restraining influence over the scribes who wrote out the standard and authoritative copies of the Scriptures, then they corrupted and falsified the message. If the message was falsified, the whole purpose of bestowing a written revelation has come to nothing; for such a corrupted Scripture would be a mixture of truth and error, necessarily subject to human judgment (rather than sitting in judgment upon man).

[Josh McDowell, 'EVIDENCE THAT DEMANDS A VERDICT', Thomas Nelson, HERE'S LIFE PUBLISHERS, San Bernadino, Ca, 1972, pp. 52-60, cont.]:

Cairo Codex (A.D. 895) is located in the British Museum. It was produced by the Massoretic Moses ben Asher family. Contains both latter and former prophets.

Codex of the Prophets of Leningrad (A.D. 916) contains Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the twelve minor prophets.

The earliest complete MS of the Old Testament is the Codex Babylonicus Petropalitanus (A.D. 1008) located in Leningrad. It was prepared from a corrected text of Rabbi Aaron ben Moses ben Asher before 1000 A.D.

Aleppo Codex (A.D. 900+) is an exceptionally valuable MS. It once was thought lost, but in 1958 was rediscovered. It did not escape damage.

British Museum Codex (A.D. 950) contains parts of Genesis through Deuteronomy

Reuchlin Codex of the Prophets (A.D. 1105). The preparation of this text was done by the Massorete ben Naphtali.

THE WITNESS OF THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS TO THE RELIABILITY OF THE HEBREW SCRIPTURES

The big question was asked first by Sir Frederic Kenyon, 'Does this Hebrew text, which we call Massoretic, and which we have shown to descend from a text drawn up about A.D. 100, faithfully represent the Hebrew Text as originally written by the authors of the Old Testament books?'

The Dead Sea Scrolls give us the explicit and positive answer.

The problem before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls was, 'How accurate are the copies we have today compared to the text of the first century?' Because the text has been copied over many times, can we trust it?

What are the Dead Sea Scrolls?

The Scrolls are made up of some 40,000 inscribed fragments. From these fragments more than 500 books have been reconstructed.

Many extra-biblical books and fragments were discovered that shed light on the religious community of Qumran. Such writings as the 'Zadokite documents,' a 'Rule of the Community' and the 'Manual of Discipline' help us to understand the purpose of daily Qumran life. In the various caves are some very helpful commentaries on the Scriptures.

How were the Dead Sea Scrolls found?

Ralph Earle gives a vivid and concise answer to how the scrolls were found, by sharing an account showing God's providential care:

'The story of this discovery is one of the most fascinating tales of modern times. In February or March of 1947 a Bedouin shepherd boy named Muhammad was searching for a lost goat. He tossed a stone into a hole in a cliff on the west side of the Dead Sea, about eight miles south of Jericho. To his surprise he heard the sound of shattering pottery. Investigating, he discovered an amazing sight. On the floor of the cave were several large jars containing leather scrolls, wrapped in linen cloth. Because the jars were carefully sealed, the scrolls had been preserved in excellent condition for nearly 1,900 years. (They were evidently placed there in A.D. 68).

'Five of the scrolls found in Dead Sea Cave I, as it is now called, were bought by the archbishop of the Syrian Orthodox Monastery at Jerusalem. Meanwhile, three other scrolls were purchased by Professor Sukenik of the Hebrew University there.

'When the scrolls were first discovered, no publicity was given to them. In November of 1947, two days after Professor Sukenik purchased three scrolls and two jars from the cave, he wrote in his diary: 'It may be that this is one of the greatest finds ever made in Palestine, a find we never so much as hoped for.' But these significant words were not published at the time.

'Fortunately, in February of 1948, the archbishop, who could not read Hebrew, phoned the American School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem and told about the scrolls. By good providence, the acting director of the school at the moment was a young scholar named John Trever, who was also an excellent amateur photographer. With arduous, dedicated labor he photographed each column of the great Isaiah scroll, which is 24 feet long and 10 inches high. He developed the plates himself and sent a few prints by airmail to Dr. W. F. Albright of Johns Hopkins University, who was widely recognized as the dean of American biblical archaeologists. By return airmail Albright wrote: 'My heartiest congratulations on the greatest manuscript discovery of modern times!... What an absolutely incredible find! And there can happily not be the slightest doubt in the world about the genuineness of the manuscript.' He dates it about 100 B.C.' (Earle, HWGB, 48-49).

Trever quotes more of Albright's opinions: 'There is no doubt in my mind that the script is more archaic than the Nash papyrus... I should prefer a date around 100 B.C... '

[Josh McDowell, 'THE NEW EVIDENCE THAT DEMANDS A VERDICT', Thomas Nelson, HERE'S LIFE PUBLISHERS, San Bernadino, Ca, 1999, p. 90]:

With the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, scholars have Hebrew manuscripts dated one thousand years earlier than the great Masoretic Text manuscripts, enabling them to check the fidelity of the Hebrew text. There is a word-for-word identity in more than 95 percent of the cases, and the 5-percent variation consists mostly of slips of the pen and spelling. The Isaiah scroll (1QIs a) from Qumran led the Revised Standard Version translators to make only thirteen changes from the Masoretic Text; eight of those were known from ancient versions, and few were significant.... Of the 166 Hebrew words in Isaiah 53, only seventeen Hebrew letters in the Isaiah B scroll differ from the Masoretic Text. Ten letters are a matter of spelling, four are stylistic changes, and the other three compose the word for 'light,' (added in verse 11), which does not affect the meaning greatly... Furthermore that word is also found in the same verse in the Septuagint and in the Isaiah A scroll.

THE VALUE OF THE SCROLLS

The oldest complete Hebrew MSS we possessed were from 900 A. D. on. How could we be sure of their accurate transmission since the time of Christ in 32 A. D.? Thanks to archaeology and the Dead Sea Scrolls, we now know. One of the scrolls found was a complete MS of the Hebrew text of Isaiah. It is dated by paleographers around 125 B.C. This MS is more than 1,000 years older than any MS we previously possessed.

The impact of this discovery is in the exactness of the Isaiah scroll (125 B.C.) with the Massoretic text of Isaiah (916 A.D.) 1,000 years later. This demonstrates the unusual accuracy of the copyists of the Scripture over a thousand-year period.

'Of the 166 words in Isaiah 53, there are only seventeen letters in question. Ten of these letters are simply a matter of spelling, which does not affect the sense. Four more letters are minor stylistic changes, such as conjunctions. The remaining three letters comprise the word 'light,' which is added in verse 11, and does not affect the meaning greatly. Furthermore, this word is supported by the LXX and IQ Is. Thus, in one chapter of 166 words, there is only one word and this word does not significantly change the meaning of the passage.' (Burrows, TDSS, 304).

F.F. Bruce says, 'An incomplete scroll of Isaiah, found along with the other in the first Qumran cave, and conveniently distinguished as '''Isaiah B,''' agrees even more closely with the Massoretic text.'

Gleason Archer states that the Isaiah copies of the Qumran community 'proved to be word for word identical with our standard Hebrew Bible in more than 95 percent of the text. The 5 percent of variation consisted chiefly of obvious slips of the pen and variations in spelling.'

Millar Burrows, cited by Geisler and Nix, concludes: 'It is a matter of wonder that through something like a thousand years the text underwent so little alteration. As I said in my first article on the scroll, '''herein lies its chief importance, supporting the fidelity of the Massoretic tradition.''' '

THE SEPTUAGINT SUBSTANTIATES THE GENUINENESS OF THE HEBREW TEXT

The Jews were scattered from their homeland and there was a need of the Scriptures in the common language of that day. Septuagint (meaning 'seventy' and usually abbreviated by use of the Roman numerals LXX) was a name given to the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures in the reign of King Ptolemy Philadelphia of Egypt (285-246 B.C.).

F.F Bruce gives an interesting rendering of the name for this translation. Concerning a letter purporting to be written around 250 B.C. (more realistically a short time before 100 B.C.) by Aristeas, a court official of King Ptolemy, to his brother Philocrates, Bruce states:

'Ptolemy was renowned as a patron of literature and it was under him that the great library at Alexandria, one of the world's cultural wonders for 900 years, was inaugurated. The letter describes how Demetrius of Phalerum, said to have been Ptolemy's librarian, aroused the king's interest in the Jewish Law and advised him to send a delegation to the high priest, Eleazar, at Jerusalem. The high priest chose as translators six elders from each of the twelve tribes of Israel and sent them to Alexandria, along with a specially accurate and beautiful parchment of the Torah. The elders were royally dined and wined, and proved their wisdom in debate; then they took up their residence in a house on the island of Pharos (the island otherwise famed for its lighthouse), where in seventy-two days they completed their task of translating the Pentateuch into Greek, presenting an agreed version as the result of conference and comparison.' (Bruce, BP, 146, 147).

The LXX, being very close to the Massoretic Text (A.D. 916) we have today, helps to establish the reliability of its transmission through 1,300 years. The greatest divergence of the LXX from the Massoretic text is Jeremiah.

The LXX and the scriptural citations found in the apocryphal books of Ecclesiasticus, the Book of Jubilees, etc., give evidence that the Hebrew text today is substantially the same as the text about 300 B.C.

Geisler and Nix, in their most helpful work, A General Introduction to the Bible, give four important contributions of the Septuagint.

'[1] It bridged the religious gap between the Hebrew-and Greek-speaking peoples, as it met the needs of the Alexandrian Jews,

[2] it bridged the historical gap between the Hebrew Old Testament of the Jews and the Greek-speaking Christians who would use it with their New Testament,

[3] and it provided a precedent for missionaries to make translations of the Scriptures into various languages and dialects;

[4] it bridges the textual criticism gap by its substantial agreement with the Hebrew Old Testament text (Aleph, A, B, C, et al.).' (Geisler, GIB, 308).

F.F. Bruce gives several reasons why the Jews lost interest in the Septuagint:

1. '..From the first century A.D. onwards the Christians adopted it as their version of the Old Testament and used it freely in their propagation and defense of the Christian faith.' (Bruce, BP, 150).

2. 'Another reason for the Jews' loss of interest in the Septuagint lies in the fact that about A.D. 100 a revised standard text was established for the Hebrew Bible by Jewish scholars...' (Bruce, BP, 151).

What began as a popular Jewish translation of the Old Testament eventually lost much of its appeal to the Jewish people.

[Josh McDowell, 'THE NEW EVIDENCE THAT DEMANDS A VERDICT', Thomas Nelson, HERE'S LIFE PUBLISHERS, San Bernadino, Ca, 1999, p. 89-90]:

THE SEPTUAGINT AND THE MASORETIC TEXT

The Septuagint was the Bible of Jesus and the apostles. Most New Testament quotations are taken from it directly, even when it differs from the Masoretic Text. On the whole the Septuagint closely parallels the Masoretic Text and is a confirmation of the fidelity of the tenth-century Hebrew text.

SAMARITAN TEXT (FIFTH CENTURY B.C.)

This text contains the Pentateuch and is valuable to determine textual readings. Bruce says that 'the variations between the Samaritan Pentateuch and the Massoretic edition [A.D. 916] of these books are quite insignificant by comparison with the area of agreement.'

[Josh McDowell, 'THE NEW EVIDENCE THAT DEMANDS A VERDICT', Thomas Nelson, HERE'S LIFE PUBLISHERS, San Bernadino, Ca, 1999, p. 90]:

Despite the many minor variants between the Samaritan Pentateuch and the Hebrew text of the Old Testament, there is substantial agreement between them. As noted previously, the six thousand variants from the Masoretic Text are mostly differences in spelling and cultural word variation. Nineteen hundred variants agree with the Septuagint (for example, in the ages given for the patriarchs in Genesis 5 and 11). Some Samaritan Pentateuch variants are sectarian, such as the command to build the temple on Mount Gerizim, not at Jerusalem (e.g., after Ex 20:17). It should be noted, however, that most manuscripts of the Samaritan Pentateuch are late (thirteenth to fourteenth centuries), and none is before the tenth century........ But the Samaritan Pentateuch still confirms the general text from which it had diverged many hundreds of years earlier.

THE TARGUMS

(appear in written form - copies, about A.D. 500)

Basic meaning is 'interpretation.' They are paraphrases of the Old Testament.

After the Jews were taken into captivity, the Chaldean language took over for Hebrew. Therefore the Jews needed the Scriptures in the spoken language.

The chief Targums are

(1) The Targum of Onkelas (60 B.C., some say by Onkelas, a disciple of the great Jewish scholar, Hillel). Contains Hebrew text of the Pentateuch.

(2) The Targum of Jonathon Ben Uzziel (30 B.C.?). Contains the historical books and the Prophets.

F. F. Bruce gives more interesting background on the Targums:

'...The practice of accompanying the public reading of the Scriptures in the synagogues by an oral paraphrase in the Aramaic vernacular grew up in the closing centuries B.C. Naturally, when Hebrew was becoming less and less familiar to the ordinary people as a spoken language, it was necessary that they should be provided with an interpretation of the text of Scripture in a language which they did know, if they were to understand what was read. The official charged with giving this oral paraphrase was called a methurgeman (translator or interpreter) and the paraphrase itself was called a targum.

'...Methurgeman... was not allowed to read his interpretation out of a roll, as the congregation might mistakenly think he was reading the original Scriptures. With a view to accuracy, no doubt, it was further laid down that no more than one verse of the Pentateuch and not more than three verses of the Prophets might be translated at one time.

'In due course these Targums were committed to writing.'

What value are the Targums?

J. Anderson in The Bible, the Word of God states their value saying: 'The great utility of the earlier Targums consists in their vindicating the genuineness of the Hebrew text, by proving that it was the same at the period the Targums were made, as it exists among us at the present day.'

THE MISHNAH (A.D. 200)

The meaning is 'explanation, teaching.' Contains a collection of Jewish traditions and exposition of the oral law. Written in Hebrew and often regarded as the Second Law.

The scriptural quotations are very similar to the Massoretic text and witness to its reliability.

THE GEMARAS

(Palestinian A.D. 200; Babylonian A.D. 500)

These commentaries (written in Aramaic) that grew up around the Mishnah contribute to the textual reliability of the Massoretic text. The Mishnah plus the Babylonian Gemara make up the Babylonian Talmud.

Mishnah + Bab. Gemara = Babylonian Talmud

Mishnah + Palest. Gemara = Palestinian Talmud

THE MIDRASH (100 B.C.-A.D. 300)

This was made up of doctrinal studies of the Old Testament Hebrew text. The Midrash quotations are substantially Massoretic.

THE HEXAPLA (sixfold)

Origin's (A.D. 185-254) production of a harmony of the Gospels in six columns: texts of the LXX, Aquila, Theodation, Symmachus, Hebrew in Hebrew letters and in Greek letters.

The Hexapla, plus writings of Josephus, Philo and the Zadokite Documents (Dead Sea Qumran community literature), 'bear witness to the existence of a text quite similar to the Massoretic [text] from A.D. 40 to 100.' "

[Josh McDowell, 'THE NEW EVIDENCE THAT DEMANDS A VERDICT', Thomas Nelson, HERE'S LIFE PUBLISHERS, San Bernadino, Ca, 1999, p. 90]:

CONCLUSION:

The thousands of Hebrew manuscripts, with their confirmation by the Septuagint and the Samaritan Pentateuch, and the numerous other cross-checks from outside and inside the text provide overwhelming support for the reliability of the Old Testament text. Hence, it is appropriate to conclude... "The Christian can take the whole Bible in his hand and say without fear or hesitation that he holds in it the true word of God, handed down without essential loss from generation to generation throughout the centuries."

Since the Old Testament is related in important ways to the New Testament, its reliability support the Christian faith. This is true not only in establishing the dates when supernatural predictions were made of the Messiah, but also in supporting the historicity of the Old Testament that Jesus and New Testament writers affirmed.

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