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Author | Topic: Isaiah and the Dead Sea Scrolls | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
I would have thought I made the simplest possible statement, nothing that could possibly have led to the confused exchange that followed. This is ALL I said:
The Isaiah scroll among the Dead Sea scrolls confirms the fact that there haven't been all the changes in the text so often claimed, as it is just about identical to the Isaiah text we have today. quote: Where did you get that I was talking about any "PROPOSED" changes? As I reread our exchange it seems clear to me that from the beginning I was talking ONLY about "common accusations" that the Bible has been changed many times over the years SINCE the time of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Here is the entire extremely confusing exchange:
My #163 to Nighttrain.
quote: Paul K in #164 then decides to challenge that one simple statement.
quote: My answer #166:
quote:But PaulK goes on in #167 with his challenge, apparently referring to changes considered to have been made PREVIOUS to the Isaiah copy in the DSS which was irrelevant to what I had said: quote: At this point I'm about to tear out my hair. Where on earth is he getting the idea I could possibly have suggested ANYTHING concerning the period BEFORE THE SCROLL WAS WRITTEN? So he goes on with this totally irrelevant information:
quote: The "dates" PaulK is asking for are IRRELEVANT because they PRECEDE the time of the Dead Sea Scrolls. But he doesn't mind haranguing me about this total irrelevancy and there doesn't seem to be anything I can say to get him to recognize the meaning of my original statement. My answer #170 TRIES to set the record straight AGAIN:
quote: quote: quote: quote: His #175 doesn't skip a beat, acknowledges not ONE thing in my attempts at correction and goes on and on with this notion of his own about the pre-DDS period:
quote: His 199
quote: I don't have the patience to try to point out the misunderstandings here. I hope they are obvious. If not, maybe we can comb through them later. Meanwhile, I will TRY to back up what I WAS saying: I have been challenged with this "common accusation" as I put it on other forums, and would have assumed it's also a common challenge to believers at this forum, although I haven't run across it here yet. I guess if I could track down examples of these common accusations it would help since apparently you haven't run across any yourself, but here are some ANSWERS to the charge, that Christians often feel obliged to supply, that may make it clear that the accusation IS pretty common: http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/bibleorg.html Page Not Found - U C G S P http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Delphi/8449/two.html
From the above link: Has the text of the Bible Been Altered Over the Centuries? One last test investigates whether or not the Bible has been corrupted down through the ages in its transmission. If it has been significantly changed, then it would not be relevant to us since inspiration does not extend to any manuscript copy. How can we know whether or not the Bible we have today is the same as what was written? This question is answered by the bibliographical test. This test looks at the number of existing manuscript copies there are, their agreement with each other concerning the text that they are copies of, and the time interval between these copies and the date of the original writing. All scholars agree that this test has conclusively established that the biblical text which we have now is nearly identical to what was originally recorded (for both Old and New Testaments). And concerning the lack of substantive changes between the DSS Isaiah and today's Isaiah: A popular account of the fact that the Isaiah scroll found in the DSS is virtually identical to the one we read today: Error | ChristianityToday.com
Take the Isaiah scroll. Until 1947, the oldest manuscript of Isaiah was a Masoretic text that had been copied in the late 900s. Although any book or scroll produced 1,000 years ago is very old, the Masoretic text is actually very "young" when you consider the prophet Isaiah lived 1,600 years before that (around 700 B.C.). This means it had been recopied many times during that interim, with plenty of opportunity for errors to be introduced. With the Qumran Isaiah text, 1,000 years older than the Masoretic text, how accurate was the later text? How significant was "the telephone game" problem? "Despite the fact that the Isaiah scroll was about a thousand years older than the Masoretic version of Isaiah," says James VanderKam of the University of Notre Dame, "the two were nearly identical except for small details that rarely affected the meaning of the text." In other words, a word like "over" in one text might read "above" in the othernot the kind of difference that rocks your faith in the reliability of the Bible texts. Though the Isaiah text had been "whispered" down the telephone line through generations of scribes, God had carefully protected his Word. A bit of a longer more scholarly account: http://www.ao.net/~fmoeller/qum-1.htm
4. The gaps in the text caused by disintegration of the leather on which the text was written are called "lacunae" In each lacuna as in this one on the page above it is possible to reproduce the missing text from the Masoretic text which is absolutely always consistent with the context. Although there are some variation from the Masoretic text, these are very infrequent and most often involve only a word and more often person and number of a verb or number of a noun, but even this is infrequent and can not be considered substantial. 5. There are several places where an extra word or two is added to the text. These are infrequent in relation to the total text and they add no real content that is not already in the text. One such addition of 2 words can be seen on this page in the last word in line 18 and the first word in line 19 These words are especially interesting because of their Aramaic origin and are discussed under Variations below. 6. Rarely, a verse is missing altogether. There is no example of this on the first page here but you can see in the portion of the next page , between the second and third line up from the lacuna there are editor's marks indicating where verse 10 of Isaiah 2 is completely omitted. Whoever the editor was he marked the text circa 100 BCE. before it was "bottled" Thus the original Isaiah text was understood at that time to contain some words which were not written by the original Qumran scribe and the elision was taken (in BCE) to be a scribal error. This is also the case in other places where there is an omission or a redundancy where the scribe has copied the same text twice and an editor has marked the error I HOPE THE POINT HAS BEEN MADE THAT I WAS ONLY REFERRING TO THE TIME FROM THE DSS ISAIAH SCROLL TO NOW, AND NOT BEFORE, AND I DON'T GET HOW YOU GOT THAT IDEA OUT OF MY VERY FIRST STATEMENT AT THE TOP OF THIS POST.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
Does the fact that Mark, as just one example, shows significant changes that totally modifies the whole feel and content of the Gospel and that those changes came long after Isaiah have any bearing on this discussion? No. All I want is acknowledgment that I made an extremely simple statement about the Isaiah scroll and have now backed it up and that PaulK misunderstood what I said.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
So you agree that the Bible has been edited and changed almost continuously and continued being edited long long after Isaiah. You are only saying that Isaiah has not be significantly edited since the Isaiah scroll? Literally, yes to your last sentence. But I also infer that it has implications for the reliability of the copying and transmission of ALL the texts since then. You might give a glance at the links I supplied. This message has been edited by Faith, 04-10-2005 08:51 PM
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
if i recall, the copy of isaiah found in the dead sea scrolls is close to identical to modern masoretic text. That's what the links I gave confirm.
however, i will counter with a similar point. TWO copies of jeremiah were found in the scrolls. and they are very, very different. which one is older? I'm not a DSS scholar but I did look this up -- briefly. Found that there is a Septuagint Jeremiah that is quite a bit shorter than the Masoretic text which is the basis for our copies of Jeremiah, though it wasn't clear that a Masoretic version was actually found in the DSS. Which is older? On what basis? They'd both be copies in any case. And if one is Septuagint and one Masoretic obviously the Hebrew (Masoretic) would be the older.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
OK, so I gather that the Masoretic is a specific lineage of Hebrew texts as it were. Post-Christian. I looked this up too and found it's such a huge and somewhat controversial topic I'm not up to thinking about it for now.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
So you agree that the Bible has been edited and changed almost continuously and continued being edited long long after Isaiah. Of course not. There is plenty of evidence that the transmission of the entire Bible has been remarkably reliable for the last 2000 years, that the differences between old and recent texts and between different "lineages" of texts as it were, are negligible. There is some evidence offered in the links I already gave in my first post but if you want more proof I won't have time to track it down for a while. As for changes prior to the DSS or prior to Christianity, that's a whole nother set of arguments. If you want to try it, muster your charges and I may get around to trying to answer them.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
Do you agree that the Bible has been edited, revised, added to, subtracted from including both the Old and New Testament? Only in ways that don't affect the message. I anticipated you. See my message #15.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
the new testament is a different story. According to whom?
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
If you take that out Mark ends dramatically differently with simply a message to be taken to the disciples and no mention of Jesus actually appearing to the apostles. Yes, modern scholars have apparently decided that its supernatural content is offensive and have determined by mindreading that Mark didn't write it, although it was included in all the old translations and only changed rather recently -- on the bogus notion that it wasn't originally part of the book. Their evidence for this is not very convincing. My judgment, in a word, is that it is completely consistent with the whole New Testament spirit and belongs there. But there is also objective evidence for my view. A couple of references: http://www.studytoanswer.net/bibleversions/markend.html
quote: Mark 16:9-20 (quoted in the following:
quote: There is plenty more on my side if you google Mark 16:9-20 textus-receptus Some on your side too of course. There is a big controversy about the Greek texts used by the old vs. the newer translations and I've been persuaded over the years that the Textus Receptus, which was the basis of the Authorized King James, is superior to the texts of the Westcott-Hort translations.
Credenda Agenda debate on the Textus Receptus quote: You may of course agree with James White, his opponent.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
I may not have time to get into this with you but it is far from "anyone" who agrees that the NT has been subjected to anything remotely like "editing." Nicaea merely compiled the books determined to have been inspired by God by the churches that had used them for 300 years. There were some controversies but actually very few. What we have today is what they had then, with only negligible differences.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
Whatever. You didn't get it and you still don't get it. OK. Way it goes.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
Well, it's nice to get that sorted out. But your second link does say this much about the issue:
NEW: Jerome, Biblical Preface to Judith. No English translation of this has been published, but it reads as follows: "Among the Jews, the book of Judith is counted/considered [legitur] among the apocrypha; the basis for affirming those [apocryphal texts] which have come into dispute is deemed less than sufficient. Moreover, since it was written in the Chaldean [he means Old Aramaic] language, it is counted among the historical books. But the Nicene Council is considered to have counted this book among the number of sacred Scriptures, I have acquiesced to your [pl.] request (or should I say demand!): and, my other work set aside, from which I was vehemently restrained, I have given a single night's work (lucubratiuncula), translating according to sense rather than verbatim. I have cut back the most error-ridden of many codices: I was able to discover only one with coherent expression in Chaldean words, to be expressed in Latin. ..." However, this only indicates that people at the Council had an idea that books might be considered scripture, or not. This is not different from the use of works in the fathers, discussing individual works rather than canon as a whole. It does not state that lists were drawn up, or necessarily that any debate on canon went on. But it does suggest some action by the council in discussing whether the Old Testament apocrypha were canonical. Or is Jerome merely confused here with the Council of Laodicea? If the Council did discuss books in general, why do none of the councils like Laodicea which include canon lists mention it? It is possible that the wide circulation of this preface is responsible for the idea, though.
The Council of Nicaea (Nicea) and the Bible
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
You object to my saying such accusations exist at all? So you don't think anybody ever complains that the Bible has changed substantially over the centuries {EDIT: since the DSS let's say at least}?
So it wouldn't have been any surprise to you that the Isaiah scroll is the same as the Isaiah we have? So there is simply no need to make an issue of it? {EDIT: So those Christian sources that make a point of answering such charges have no charges to answer; they're just making up charges themselves to answer?} There have been no serious copying errors? The Bible has been passed down quite reliably? Well, great. I certainly believe that. And nobody's ever raised doubts about that? Interesting you've never encountered them. Some of us have. {Edited to improve clarity I hope.} This message has been edited by Faith, 04-11-2005 03:40 AM
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
I posted TWO links that show that the differences between the DSS Isaiah scroll and our current Isaiah are trivial.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
READ the Moeller link.
I posted it myself in my message #5http://www.ao.net/~fmoeller/qum-1.htm It is VERY clear that the differences are NOTHING BUT trivial. This message has been edited by Faith, 04-11-2005 03:37 AM
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