Isaiah and the Dead Sea Scrolls

The fact is that your quotes do NOT show that it is commonly claimed that the Hebrew text of Isaiah has been significantly changed since the DSS Isaiah scroll was written. They deal with MORE general claims covering the entire Bible.Maybe the whole relationship between general and specific is too difficult for you ?

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The fact is that your quotes do NOT show that it is commonly claimed that the Hebrew text of Isaiah has been significantly changed since the DSS Isaiah scroll was written. They deal with MORE general claims covering the entire Bible.

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Maybe the whole relationship between general and specific is too difficult for you ?

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No, dear, apparently it is you who have the problem. From the beginning I have claimed only that "it is commonly claimed" that the Bible as a whole has been subjected to many changes due to copying errors etc., and the existence of simply ONE book that is identical to ours IS indeed proof that they are wrong in their general complaint. Have a cup of coffee. It's good for waking up sluggish brains.

I just realized that you have apparently made the same mistake I think jar did, thinking there is some direct genealogical relation as it were between the various copies of the Bible texts. You think our Bible texts CAME FROM the Qumran texts. Big mistake. Theirs are theirs, ours came from other lineages. The fact that they happen to have a copy of Isaiah that is identical to ours is great evidence that there haven't been significant copying errors since that PERIOD of time, but our Isaiah wasn't copied from theirs, and none of the others we have were copied from theirs, so your concerns about their other corrupted manuscripts aren't relevant to anything.

So now from a general claim you jump to a universal. Please learn the difference.But the fact is that you still have not got one example of commonly made claim that is disproved by the DSS Isaiah scroll.

One book compared to how many others that have multiple differences using the same reference (DSS) does not show what you claim above. You yourself use my line of argument as follows: BUT Hmmm, not it's not. If your 1 is proof that the entire text is without significant mistake then by your own argument and mine you must lend credence to 45 texts that show 5000 are wrong....I think the best that you can claim based on what PaulK quoted from you in this thread is that Isaiah alone seems to be consistent with modern day versions when compared to the DSS only. That's it. Extrapolations to the consistency of the entire bible are unsupported. No, I just suggested that your point is only supported inasmuch as the DSS are concerned and that you can't really claim anything about earlier times. Since this does not seem to be consistent with many other scrolls found then you can ONLY in good conscious claim consistency with regard to the Isaiah scroll.....once again.However, who cares if there are differences here and there? I'm assuming you worship god not the bible, so is the message the same? That's all that matters. You seem very upset and edgy, calm down. In the end, you will not change PaulK's way of thinking and PaulK will not change your faith.

Let's be very clear. The ISAIAH scroll can't prove that there were no changes in other books. There are, I believe other scrolls in the DSS that indicate that some other books are at least substantially the same(although at least one - a version of Jeremaiah - indicates significant variations have occurred in transmission, being 1/8th shorter than the Masoretic version).

??????Yes, that's why I specifically made a point of showing the fallacy in Faith's argument about the Isaiah scroll "showing consistency within the whole bible and the other scolls". I was attempting to draw a parallel with your argument and mine on this level in that Faith thought 5000 texts outweighed 45 texts....ergo the remaining scrolls with significant differences outweighs the Isaiah scroll...if this was not clear to you then I can't wait to see what Faith's response is to me.- -sigh- - gotta do more work on my communication "skills".

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So now from a general claim you jump to a universal. Please learn the difference.
But the fact is that you still have not got one example of commonly made claim that is disproved by the DSS Isaiah scroll.

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Well I guess I can keep this up as long as you can. We'll see.I haven't jumped to anything. My claim is the same as it's always been. You misunderstood it at first and you are persisting in misunderstanding it.You seem to have trouble grasping how the existence of one DSS scroll that has the identical text to ours proves the integrity of the text of the whole Bible that has come down to us. If you don't get this after all this time I don't suppose I can get it across now either.Let me start again by pointing out that the fact that it's Isaiah is not crucial. If it had been Jonah or Malachi or Samuel it would have done as well, though since Isaiah is quite the tome it has more room for error, so its lack of error does carry quite a bit of weight.However, ANY virtually perfect match between what we have and they had would be great evidence against the charge of serious copying errors over the last 2000 years. Now REALLY, this hasn't sunk in yet?This message has been edited by Faith, 04-12-2005 12:45 PM

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Let's be very clear. The ISAIAH scroll can't prove that there were no changes in other books.

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The copyists copied many books. That was their job, their life calling. Since they did such a good job on one it's fair to assume they did so with the others. If one came down to us as Isaiah did virtually identical to the one at Qumran, that means it survived uncountable generations of copyists. It doesn't prove "that there were no changes in other books" but it sure does prove that the copying methods overall were quite trustworthy and we should be able to expect as high a standard of success on the other books they copied --again, these many generations of copyists.

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There are, I believe other scrolls in the DSS that indicate that some other books are at least substantially the same(although at least one - a version of Jeremaiah - indicates significant variations have occurred in transmission, being 1/8th shorter than the Masoretic version).

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Yes, the other books of the DSS ARE substantially the same. It's just that the Isaiah scroll is so beautifully complete and near perfect it makes an especially good reference point. One of the two versions of Jeremiah is like ours. However you look at it the work of the copyists over the last 20 centuries comes off as good work well done.

You seem to be confusing my discussion of Mark 16:9-20 with jar with the one about the Isaiah scroll with PaulK. I'm not getting your point.

The two situations are completely different. The 5000 texts are those preferred by the Church over the centuries, the 45 having been rather marginalized as not considered as good.The errors in the DSS scrolls have no bearing whatever on our texts as they were not the basis for our texts. As PaulK pointed out, hwoever, even in that case the texts they had are quite close to what we have. But my point is that ANY match from that time to ours demonstrates the efficiency of generations of copyists over the centuries since then.This message has been edited by Faith, 04-12-2005 01:12 PM

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You seem to have trouble grasping how the existence of one DSS scroll that has the identical text to ours proves the integrity of the text of the whole Bible that has come down to us. If you don't get this after all this time I don't suppose I can get it across now either.

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Like I said your problem is that your claim is obviously false. Not only does the scroll fail to prove that there were not earlier changes it CANNOT prove that other documents were not changed later.

My replies to you have been in reference to quotes I have taken from your responses to PaulK.....what's the confusion?You have extrapolated that the bible in it's entirety has been changed very little based on one scroll, the Isaiah scroll. THIS IS VERY FLAWED and is not supportive.I've used your own comparisons and quotes to show your inconsistencies, so if you don't get the point then you might want to re-think your position.As to my last statements that was an aside ONLY!

I have to admit to not being aware of why the 45 are not considered legitimate....but I see this as flawed logic that gets applied by you and others as follows:In other words, you are holding the modern day text as the golden standard and judging whether or not scrolls, versions, etc support what you already hold as fact (unsupported fact). This means that you will conclude that anything found that supports your modern day fact is indeed proof, but if it is neither found in your modern day fact or does not support your modern day fact then it must be incorrect, sub-standard, or disregarded since it was not included in your modern day fact. This is strange as there is this issue of time, and to say that something that is modern is fact over a different version from an earlier time is definitely twisted...mmm not logic, but rationalizing.Wouldn't this be like saying the Greeks named their gods all wrong because in Roman times ("more modern") the gods names were different and CORRECT, so whatever the Greeks used was wrong?Guess I don't follow your logic at all. So, this means that the modern day version are correct, right??Don't feel like you need to reply.

The 45 don't contain that passage in Mark. It is contained in the 5000. The 5000 represent the majority view of the Church over the centuries. The minority view, however, has been coming to dominate through the work of modern scholars who have no authority from the majority Church. I think you have things backward but in so many ways it is very hard for me to sort out. For starters I am not defending the modern position but the objections TO the modern position. I'm afraid that's an understatement. I don't even know where to begin to sort it out. No, it means that there were many many different lines of texts coming down to us from ancient times and ours didn't happen to come from the same line as the Qumran scrolls. But we have the same texts they had as the same texts were being copied and circulated among the Christian churches throughout the Roman Empire. I don't know what's "modern" about that.I don't feel a NEED to reply but it would be nice to get this straightened out if possible.However, I HAVE to take a long break to get some work done if I can possibly tear myself away from this forum for the purpose.