Isaiah and the Dead Sea Scrolls

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Originally you made the statement in the context of having written "over the centuries" and you were taking exception to the "common accusation that the Bible has supposedly been altered over the centuries" and THEN, without qualifying YOUR statement you said the following "The existence of any scroll from that time that has the same text as our text is proof that such accusations are unfounded.".

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But since the "accusation" was "over the centuries" your statement in no way refutes the claim you mention (in light that YOU MEANT to say "unfounded post-DSS").

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Since your original post was to refute "over the centuries" not it is not.

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THE SCROLLS AND THE MASORETIC TEXT

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Critical scholars questioned the accuracy of the MT, which formed the basis of our English versions of the Old Testament, since there was
such a large chronological gap between it and the autographs. Because of this uncertainty, scholars often corrected the text with oconsiderable freedom. Qumran, however, has provided remains of an early Masoretic edition predating the Christian era on which the traditional MT is based. A comparison of the MT to this earlier text revealed the remarkable accuracy with which scribes copied the sacred texts.

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Accordingly, the integrity of the Hebrew Bible was confirmed, which
generally has heightened its respect among scholars and drastically
reduced textual alteration.

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Most of the biblical manuscripts found at Qumran belong to the MT tradition or family. This is especially true of the Pentateuch and some of the Prophets. The well-preserved Isaiah scroll from Cave 1 illustrates the tender care with which these sacred texts were copied. Since about 1700 years separated Isaiah in the MT from its original source, textual critics assumed that centuries of copying and recopying this book must have introduced scribal errors into the document that obscured the original message of the author.The Isaiah scrolls found at Qumran closed that gap to within 500 years
of the original manuscript.

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What do we know from the field of textual criticism?

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"Textual criticism" is the field of study in which experts compare the various manuscripts in existence to one another, seeking to come as close as possible to what the original author wrote. The original manuscripts are called "autographs," literally "self writings." Today, with the passage of so much time, no autographsoriginal copiesexist of any of the Old or New Testament books.

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Over the centuries minor differences (called variants) often make their way into successive copies of handwritten documents, even with the greatest of care of the scribes involved. Thus, the field of study called textual criticism exists to try to identify these variations and determine what the original texts said.

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After 1455 and Johannes Gutenberg's invention of the first movable metal type printing press, the Bible could be printed over and over again with predictable accuracy, so variants no longer were a concern. However, before that time manuscripts still had variants. Thus the period before 1455 is where textual criticism comes into play.

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Because of the strict requirements and few locations where the Old Testament was copied, few variants or versions of the Old Testament ever came into existence. When the Dead Sea Scrolls (primarily portions of the Old Testament dating mostly from the first century B.C.) were discovered in 1947, many people were initially concerned that they would show marked differences with the Masoretic Text of the Old Testament.

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Because the Dead Sea Scrolls were a thousand years older than the oldest and most reliable Masoretic Text we have today (the Leningrad Codex, dating to A.D. 1008), scholars thought they might find drastic differences over that long passage of time. But did they?

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After years of study, they found that the Dead Sea Scrolls they examined have only a relatively few minor, insignificant differences from today's Masoretic Text of the Old Testament.

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"These oldest-known Biblical texts have one absolutely crucial feature," explains historian Ian Wilson. "Although ... a thousand years older than the texts previously available in Hebrew, they show just how faithful the texts of our present Bibles are to those from two thousand years ago and how little they have changed over the centuries. Two Isaiah scrolls, for instance, contain the Isaiah text almost exactly as it is in our present-day Bibles ...

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"Although there are, as we might expect, some minor differences, these are mostly the interchange of a word or the addition or absence of a particular phrase. For example, whereas in present-day Bibles Isaiah 1:15 ends, 'Your hands are covered in blood', one of the Dead Sea pair adds, 'and your fingers with crime'. Where Isaiah 2:3 of our present-day Bibles reads, 'Come, let us go up to the mountain of [the LORD]', to the house of the God of Jacob', the Dead Sea Scroll version omits, 'to the mountain of [the LORD]'.

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"Such discrepancies are trifling, and there can be no doubt that the Biblical books someone stored away so carefully at Qumran two thousand years ago were as close to those we know in our present Hebrew and Old Testament Bibles as makes no difference" (The Bible Is History, 1999, p. 205).

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Where there are differences, however, this does not mean the Dead Sea Scrolls were correct and the Masoretic Text incorrect. We should keep in mind that the Dead Sea Scrolls were not necessarily transcribed with the same meticulous preservation practices as those used by the main scribes of the time. Nonetheless, the remarkable discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls is astounding confirmation that the Old Testament has indeed been accurately preserved for us today.

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