Isaiah and the Dead Sea Scrolls

I agree, the spiritual message is what is important. Skeptics point to all the inconsistencies and contradictions of the gospels without considering the failing memories of the writers or the partial histories of witnesses. There are endless discussions about how one gospel is inconsistent with another.Consider the skeptic criticism if the gospels were indeed much closer to each other and matched on almost a word for word level. Then the accusation would be collusion. They would say that surely it is not possible to have gospels that match so closely without the authors getting together to exchange notes.

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My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind. ---Albert Einstein

Inerrant, meaning without error. That’s a tough call and I have often wrestled with this. Basically, I don’t believe the Bible was dictated in a word for word communication from God, (although some parts may have been like the ten commandments).I believe that it was inspired by God but not written by God. Well, what does that mean? Inspired is to be guided by, affected by, but not dictated to in staccato fashion. So the very process of inspiration is inexact in its nature.So when more than one individual is being inspired, even if the inspiration is about the same topic, should we be surprised the outcome is not exactly the same? Again, it’s the message that’s important and not the semantics of the message.I agree with Faith’s assessment:

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My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind. ---Albert Einstein

Hi Tagless,
This a long thread and I may be rehashing previous points made by Faith, but I’ll tell you a story.When the DSS first became available in 1999, I bought a copy soon after. I really didn’t know that much at all about it or what it represented. But I was curious. The DSS seemed mysterious to me and it had taken so long to translate an English version.I was looking forward to reading these ancient texts and perhaps uncovering for myself some new nugget of information or as yet unpublished ancient story that I hadn’t read before.But when I sat down and began reading it, I was actually disappointed. It was so close to the version of the Bible that I already had, I thought I had wasted my money in buying it.I didn’t consider that here was an ancient text written 2100 years ago that matched almost verbatim the Bible that I had. And at the time, I was using the NIV which many folks consider to be an inferior translation.I don’t know if the DSS and modern versions are from the same tradition, or if they used the same original, or if it is the correct variation, if there is such a thing as correctness when referring to such ancient texts.All I know is that I am sitting here, as I type this post, with the DSS and the NIV in front of me and I can look up any verse in the book of Isaiah or any other book of the DSS (that aren’t missing) and find the same verse in the NIV and the meaning is the same. I find that remarkable.

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My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind. ---Albert Einstein

Hi Faith,I've tracked a few of your threads on this board and your alias is aptly named because one would have to have a deep faith to keep posting and persevere in the face of so much resistance. You have at least one fan. Carry on!

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My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind. ---Albert Einstein

I don't know that anyone can truely speak for the quality control done so many years ago. But I would say that the Bible was held to be sacred texts by the copyist.There is evidence that it was regarded as a sacred duty accompanyed by strict discipline. I don't know much about the belief system of those performing the task of copying. But since the texts themselves have always been rare, then only the most devout believers would be allowed access to them. So yes, I would say the copyist were strong believers.As such I would assume that since there was more reverence for the Bible texts compared to non-biblical texts, one could reasonably conclude that more care was taken during copying. Holding the texts as sacred or extremely valuable would generally tend to ensure accurate reproduction. That's merely speculation on my part.This of course says nothing about the truth of the material contained in the texts.

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My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind. ---Albert Einstein

All the books of the modern bibles are represented by the DSS including those books that Protestants consider apocraphal. In addition, there were two other books found in the DSS that are not part of most modern texts. The Book of Jubilees and 1 Enoch.Most Christian denominations consider these two books to be apocraphal. They were obscure but known before the DSS was found and they are considered in high regard to this day by the Ethiopic Christian church.What can I conclude from this? Only that they were not sufficiently acceptable to be declared Scripture by most of the early Christian churches. Of course they weren’t the only ones, there were many other ancient texts that were excluded from the Bible, but that’s probably a topic for another thread.

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My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind. ---Albert Einstein