Digital Dead Sea Scrolls

Their existence is extraordinary.  The fact that we can now view them at home is even more so.  If you are interested in the Dead Sea Scrolls, make a stop here at their ditigal site.

Discovered in 1947, the scrolls generated a great deal of interest, then a number of conspiracy theories, conflicting origin theories and even more question  as they remained sequestered. Today their digital imprints are available to anyone with an internet connection. They do raise as many questions as they answer.  There are scrolls from all of what is considered the Old Testament, with the exception of Esther.  According to The Oxford Companion to Archaeology:

The biblical manuscripts from Qumran, which include at least fragments from every book of the Old Testament, except perhaps for the book of Esther, provide a far older cross section of scriptural tradition than that available to scholars before. While some of the Qumran biblical manuscripts are nearly identical to the Masoretic, or traditional, Hebrew text of the Old Testament, some manuscripts of the books of Exodus and Samuel found in Cave Four exhibit dramatic differences in both language and content.

That’s an example of questions remaining.  I’ve read an article that rather than created/buried only by Essenes, there are findings which place some of the scrolls as originating in Jerusalem, carried by those dispersed prior to the destruction of the city in 70 AD. This is based on the copper scroll’s translation which include references to temple items, some of the phylacteries’ translations and to Josephus’ ‘Wars’ descriptions.  There’s an interesting article on this in the Jewish Daily Forward from 2007.

What the Scrolls tell me is the preservation of the word of God across millennia.  For centuries, deniers spoke and wrote of how impossible it would be to preserve the Tanakh down through the ages as it was hand copied over and over and over again. The scrolls, which “contains alternative spellings, scribal errors, corrections, and most fundamentally, many variant readings,” carry the same message. The ‘word’ that David studied, and wrote of in his psalms …

Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee. (Psalms 119:11 KJV)

… is the same ‘word’ available to us today, for that very same reason – that we might not sin against God.  The same God available to us today.

I have no doubt that arguments can be made for more than one source of the Dead Sea Scrolls; for and against specific copies of the biblical books; for and against individual interpretations – but the history of Judaism and God’s message to His people remains the same.

Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD: And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. (Deuteronomy 6:4-5 KJV)

This is truth, and this is what we are to do with the truth:

And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. (Deuteronomy 6:6-7 KJV)