Masoretic Text

So 1Q Isaiah A, 1Q Isaiah B.

If you look at these two scrolls, what you'll find is that 1Q Isaiah A is, I think it's this one, is very similar to our Masoretic text, our Hebrew text.

And it's written in Hebrew.

But 1Q Isaiah B, also written in Hebrew, is

very similar to our Septuagint text.

So what you actually have in the Dead Sea Scrolls are two Hebrew manuscripts existing concurrently where one matches the Masoretic Hebrew text that we have and one matches the Septuagint text.

So probably what ended up, what happened was at some point there were During the Dead Sea Scrolls time, there were two Hebrew texts, and eventually the rabbis, probably around the 200s or so, decided to get rid of the other text so that there was only one, and that became the Masoretic.

Now, before anybody freaks out about that idea of there being two Hebrew texts, again, there's nothing revolutionary about it.

Here's what we need to do.

Let's start with the Masoretic text, the Masoretic Hebrew text, because this is important, right? Now, if we follow the Masoretic text, We're going to get the basic, what we've already broken down.

You're going to have one who takes, acquires, or seizes souls, lives, persons, wise or wise person.

And so you would have basically a literal translation coming from the Masoretic text.

And one who takes lives or persons is wise.

Right? If we're taking the Masoretic text and you're trying to be very literal, that's what you have.

And the one who takes lives or persons is wise.

Right? Now, the Hebrew verb does not, I cannot stress this enough, does not mean evangelizing or converting someone to a religion.

And the actual events of the Old Testament come to an end about 400 BC.

So you can see the large gap between the Old Testament events and the copy of the so-called Masoretic script.

So when the Dead Sea Scrolls turn up and they're dated between the third century BC, and about the first century AD.

So at or before the time of Jesus, you've just got really old manuscripts that can be put side by side with the Masoretic script from 1000 AD.

And you can compare, particularly this one document called the Great Isaiah Scroll.

It's the entire book of Isaiah, and you can compare it line by line, word by word, punctuation by punctuation.

and there's a Great Isaiah scroll, which is the entire book of Isaiah.

So you can take the 1000 AD so-called Masoretic script, put it on one side, take the Great Isaiah scroll from about 300 BC and put it on the other side and compare it word for word, and you'll see that there are no substantive changes at all.

There is a couple of differences of wording.

There are a couple of differences of punctuation.

We don't have a problem with the scroll length anymore, but our modern Bibles keep the two-part book convention.

The traditional Hebrew text handed down through centuries of Jewish scribes, known as the Masoretic text, is notoriously difficult in Samuel.

For reasons that scholars still debate, the manuscript of Samuel suffered more from scribal wear and copying mistakes than almost any other book in the Bible.

Scribes accidentally skipped lines because of identical word endings, dropped letters, or inherited damaged scrolls.

A famous example appears in 1 Samuel 13.1.

The Hebrew text in the Masoretic text says Saul was one year old when he began to reign, and that he reigned for two years over Israel.

This is an obvious case where scribes lost numbers in transmission.

For centuries, they relied on the ancient Greek Septuagint translation to guess what the original Hebrew text said.

The historian points out that the diversity among manuscript traditions, such as that evidenced by this Septuagint, compared to the Masoretic text, as well as the variants found in the Dead Sea Scrolls, reflects a complex textual reality.

In the centuries prior to Christ, canonical Hebrew texts were not confined to a single consolidated manuscript tradition.

There is evidence of at least three main textual traditions coexisting, the Babylonian, Samaritan, and pre-Masoretic traditions.

This panorama reveals that, before the standardization of the biblical text, there was a rich textual diversity, allowing for significant variations among versions.

The Book of Jubilees, with its textual peculiarities, seems to fit within this context of plurality, serving as an additional testament to the fluidity and evolution of manuscript traditions in antiquity.

This multiplicity of sources not only enriches the understanding of religious texts, but also highlights the cultural and theological dynamics of the communities that preserved and adapted them over the centuries.

While some argue that the pre-Masoretic text could have been considered reliable at the time, this idea is subject to debate, with arguments both supporting and challenging it.

Between 1947 and 1956, approximately 15 scrolls of the Book of Jubilees were discovered in five caves at Qumran.