Isaiah and the Dead Sea Scrolls

Wrong replyThis message has been edited by Taqless, 16-Apr-2005 04:27 PM

Hi Monk,
I wanted to inform you that when I stated this:"I then asked about changes prior to the DSS and was informed by Faith that since the scribes did such a great job post-DSS that one could conclude that the same could be said about the texts prior to the DSS."in post #151 I was mistaken. After carefully re-reading Faith's reply (#49)I mistakenly thought the subject was still about my question(#46) when it appears that for some reason Faith began discussin the reliability of the scribes SINCE the DSS. It threw me off, and so I jumped to the wrong conclusion and my above statement is incorrect.

That's OK.No hard feelings.This message has been edited by Faith, 04-17-2005 03:00 AM

There are mistranslations of Isaiah being propagated to this very day, purposeful mistranslations too!For example, they are still insisting that ALmah means virgin,when it means no such thing.

Why, yes it has changed. The 'bible' has been translated, and mistranslated for one. And second of all, what constitutes the 'bible' has changed. Before a certain timeframe, there was no set canon about what constituted the Bible, or what constituted the tankah.The text of Isaiah might not have changed all that much. What constitutes the Tankah has. Also, what is considered part of CHristian scriptures has changed. The council of Nicea formalised what they thought should be considered scripture. The church in rome also went on a program to destroy as much 'competing' scripture as they could.

This was answered on this thread. There are only five or six places in the Hebrew Bible where the word "Almah" occurs. It was the JEWISH PRE-CHRISTIAN GREEK SEPTUAGINT TRANSLATION of the Hebrew Scriptures that rendered it "VIRGIN" (Greek: Parthenos) and did so in TWO places, not only in Isaiah 7:14 but also in the Song of Songs (which I'd have to look up but it shouldn't be hard for you to find.) In the four other places it was translated "young woman" or "maiden." If Jewish translators in 200+ BC translated it to mean "virgin" in those two places then that's what it means. Also, before Christ that passage was considered by Jewish leaders to be messianic. Only after Christ did they decide maybe it wasn't after all, though not all of them even then.

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Why, yes it has changed. The 'bible' has been translated, and mistranslated for one.

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As people around here delight in saying, prove it. Just as the original Hebrew text has not been altered over the centuries since the Dead Sea Scrolls, which is proved by the fact that the DSS Isaiah is identical to ours, the English translation OF the DSS Isaiah is also identical to our English translation, as somebody on this thread testified, Monk I believe.

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And second of all, what constitutes the 'bible' has changed. Before a certain timeframe, there was no set canon about what constituted the Bible, or what constituted the tankah.

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No, but at some point it became necessary to establish which of the many writings had the status of being inspired by God. This is not a "change," this is a setting of standards to determine the relative importance of various writings, and it is exactly the right thing to do.

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The text of Isaiah might not have changed all that much.

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Read the thread. Extremely insignificant differences, minor errors of copying, nothing that affects the meaning. We have virtually the same Isaiah word for word that was found in the DSS

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What constitutes the Tankah has.

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This thread is not about what constitutes the canon of the Old (Tanakh) or New Testaments, it's about the integrity of the actual text of various books of the Old Testament. In the Dead Sea Scrolls were found fragments of every book in the OT except Esther and they ALL contain the same text as our copies of them have now. The Isaiah scroll was simply the most complete manuscript found there, but all the books except Esther were represented.

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Also, what is considered part of CHristian scriptures has changed. The council of Nicea formalised what they thought should be considered scripture. The church in rome also went on a program to destroy as much 'competing' scripture as they could.

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You are perpetuating pernicious myths here. In the first place, as somebody on this thread pointed out, Nicea had nothing to do with formalizing scripture. They didn't even list books they considered canonical although other Councils did do that.However, at some point the canon was determined upon and the standard for determining it was the judgment of the many churches over the previous centuries, not some arbitrary whim of the people at a council. The idea that anybody destroyed "competing" scripture is a stupid slander. There were many many writings in circulation among the churches over the first few centuries and all that happened is that the churches decided in the end which of them were authentic inspired writings and which were less important or in some cases actually heretical. The authentic became the canon, the false were excluded, which is exactly what any sane person would do given the task of determining the inauthentic from the authentic, kind of like weeding your garden -- or do you like to cultivate weeds?You might want to read more of this thread.

Actually Faith, there still is no one list of what is Scripture and what is not within Christianity.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Apparently not, just lists kept by different groups, but there aren't big differences. The Apocrypha have different levels of standing and that's about it, isn't it?

Not at all. For example most of the books of John are tossed in some canon while others include things like the Gospel of Thomas.There is a very wide range of what is considered as Scriptual even among Christian Churches.This message has been edited by jar, 04-23-2005 12:38 PM

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

I am sure we will disagree then as to what constitutes a Christian church as the Gospel of Thomas is regarded as Gnostic and therefore heretical by orthodox Christianity.

It doesn't much matter what you consider a Christian Church, there simply are many Christian Churches. Many of the churches such as the Ethiopian Christian Church and the Syrian Christian Church are older than the Roman Christian branches. These ARE Christian Churches. They, as do others, have different canon than the Greek based branches of the Christian Church but that makes them no less Christian.For example, Enoch and Jubilees, 3^rd. and 4^th. Ezra, 3 ^rd. Macabees are often included in the OT. In the NT you often find John 2 & 3, Peter 2 and Revelation are considered heretical while Clement and Didascalia are included.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

It doesn't much matter what you consider a Christian church either then, and that being the case I'll continue to disagree and contend that the Gospel of Thomas makes a church not Christian as most orthodox groups would. There's nothing about it that is consistent with the gospels Well now you are saying no more than I already said about the Apocrypha. By whom?This message has been edited by Faith, 04-23-2005 04:17 PM

By mainstream Christian Churches. For example, the Ethiopian Christian Church.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Hi allI just joined this forum and this is my very first post. I was wondering that how sure one is about the authenticity of Dead Sea Scrolls? What if it is an hoax?

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"An uninformed person cannot conceptualize the essence of knowledge nor its sublimity. One who fails to conceptualize something, its significance will never become rooted in the heart."