The Dead Sea Scrolls

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The Dead Sea Scrolls

I’ve tried searching on google to find out which of the texts are more aligned with the Dead Sea scrolls, the Septuagint or Masoretic text? I got conflicting answers. Does anybody know the answer? Are there references that could be used for proof?

God bless,
 
Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger wrote in 2001: “… one can appreciate the enormous task the Pontifical Biblical Commission set for itself in deciding to tackle the theme of the relationship between the Old and New Testaments. If the impasse presented by Harnack is to be overcome, the very concept of an interpretation of historical texts must be broadened and deepened enough to be tenable in today’s liberal climate, and capable of application, especially to Biblical texts received in faith as the Word of God. Important contributions have been made in this direction over recent decades. The Pontifical Biblical Commission made its own contribution in the Document published in 1993 on “The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church”. The recognition of the multidimensional nature of human language, not staying fixed to a particular moment in history, but having a hold on the future, is an aid that permits a greater understanding of how the Word of God can avail of the human word to confer on a history in progress a meaning that surpasses the present moment and yet brings out, precisely in this way, the unity of the whole. Beginning from that Document, and mindful of methodology, the Biblical Commission examined the relationship between the many great thematic threads of both Testaments, and was able to conclude that the Christian hermeneutic of the Old Testament, admittedly very different from that of Judaism, “corresponds nevertheless to a potentiality of meaning effectively present in the texts” (no. 64). This is a conclusion, which seems to me to be of great importance for the pursuit of dialogue, but above all, for grounding the Christian faith.”
 
Augustine3 said:
The Dead Sea Scrolls

I’ve tried searching on google to find out which of the texts are more aligned with the Dead Sea scrolls, the Septuagint or Masoretic text? I got conflicting answers. Does anybody know the answer? Are there references that could be used for proof?

God bless,
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They are predominantly those of the Masoretic text type, with those texts that follow the Septuagint or Samaritan Pentateuch in the fairly small minority. Some are mixed. See Lawrence Schiffman, Qumran and Jerusalem, 38 ff.
 
I thought the Masoretic text was heavily influenced by the Jumnia text and that the Jumnia text was partly corrupted due to the Jewish scholars attempt to distort the prophecies of Christ. If that is so what does that say about the Dead Sea scrolls?

God bless,
 
No, the Massoretic Text was not corrupted; it is amazing (or just Divine Providence) that the Qumran Isaiah Scroll in the Shrine of the Book in Jerusalem is 98% identical with the Massoretic Text. The Isaiah Scroll dates from about 100 B.C. and the Massoretic Text from about 900 A.D. Fr. Mitch Pacwa, S.J. provided this information when my wife and I were on his 2009 Pilgrimage to the Holy Land. You may wish to contact EWTN and see if there is any way that he could send you some references and texts with translations. Also, Steven(?) Ray may be of help on this as well.

George Largess
 
codeyrolley said:
The Septuagint Old Testament Translation versus The Jamnian-Palestinian and Masoretic Old Testament Translations
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That web page describes a view that can most charitably described as “eccentric.” I do not know of any mainstream scholars who that the Hebrew Bible was backtranslated from a Greek version.

As to the use of the word of the “almah” – we have the “Great Isaiah Scroll” as part of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which carbon dating identifies as being around 100 BCE. It includes the world *almah *(young woman), not virgin. You can read the relevant passage with a photograph of the original manuscript here.
 
Augustine3 said:
I thought the Masoretic text was heavily influenced by the Jumnia text and that the Jumnia text was partly corrupted due to the Jewish scholars attempt to distort the prophecies of Christ. If that is so what does that say about the Dead Sea scrolls?

God bless,
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Since the majority (and possibly all) of the Dead Sea Scrolls pre-date the Christian era, that doesn’t really support such a theory.

At least as far as I know, there is no such thing as the Jumnia text.
 
Bible_Reader said:
As to the use of the word of the “almah” – we have the “Great Isaiah Scroll” as part of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which carbon dating identifies as being around 100 BCE. It includes the world *almah *(young woman), not virgin.
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The websites I’ve been reading all say the word *almah * was later used by Jews in the post Christian era in order to water down the messiah prophecy pointing to Jesus. Since this is clearly not the case with the Dead Sea scrolls why would the Dead Sea scrolls have this sort of translation instead of using the word “virgin”?

God bless,
 
Augustine3 said:
The websites I’ve been reading all say the word *almah * was later used by Jews in the post Christian era in order to water down the messiah prophecy pointing to Jesus. Since this is clearly not the case with the Dead Sea scrolls why would the Dead Sea scrolls have this sort of translation instead of using the word “virgin”?
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The evidence is overwhelming that that the Hebrew has always said almah since before the Christian era. However, our New Testament does not quote from the Hebrew, but from a set of Greek translations of the Bible known as the Septuagint, which have parthenos, which means “virgin.”

This raises questions:

(1) Is *parthenos *the original translation of almah, or was the text of the Septuagint changed to bring it into harmony with Matthew 1:23?

(2) Is *parthenos *a correct translation of almah?

This is an ancient dispute, and goes at least back to Justin Martyr’s Dialogue with Trypho (which is from the middle of the second century).

Regardless of the answers to these two questions, we have an interpretation in Matthew 1:23 that seems fairly definitive. However, there is no justification for suspecting malfeasance among either Jews or Christians here.
 
Augustine3 said:
The Dead Sea Scrolls

I’ve tried searching on google to find out which of the texts are more aligned with the Dead Sea scrolls, the Septuagint or Masoretic text? I got conflicting answers. Does anybody know the answer? Are there references that could be used for proof?

God bless,
Click to expand...
According to one estimate (there are still debates as to the exact figures and how to classify the texts):

60% of the Biblical scrolls and fragments are of the proto-Masoretic textual tradition; 15% reflect the textual form found in the Samaritan Pentateuch; 5% share distinctive affinities with the Greek Septuagint; 20% are of the so-called ‘Qumran Style’ (with distinctive long orthography and morphology, frequent errors and corrections, and a rather free approach to the text); with the remaining 10% unaligned, that is they, show no consistent alignment with any of the other four text-types. These ‘independent’ texts fall into two categories: those inconsistent in agreeing with other known types (i.e. they agree with one textual type in one portion and with another type in the other), and those that diverge significantly from all other known readings.
 
Augustine3 said:
I thought the Masoretic text was heavily influenced by the Jumnia text and that the Jumnia text was partly corrupted due to the Jewish scholars attempt to distort the prophecies of Christ. If that is so what does that say about the Dead Sea scrolls?

God bless,
Click to expand...
Where do you get this stuff? :confused:

In fact, it is even doubtful whether there was a late-1st century ‘council’ in Jamnia (aka Yavneh) which discussed the canonicity of certain books at all. That was just a 19th century hypothesis.
 
patrick457 said:
Where do you get this stuff? :confused:

In fact, it is even doubtful whether there was a late-1st century ‘council’ in Jamnia (aka Yavneh) which discussed the canonicity of certain books at all. That was just a 19th century hypothesis.
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A Muslim college claims there scriptures are corrupt and the differences between the Septuagint and Masoretic texts prove this. Are the differences merely matters of interpretation and grammar errors or is there more to it?

God bless,
 
Augustine3 said:
A Muslim college claims there scriptures are corrupt and the differences between the Septuagint and Masoretic texts prove this. Are the differences merely matters of interpretation and grammar errors or is there more to it?

God bless,
Click to expand...
Some Muslims quote the Koran (typically Al-Nisa 4:46) as proof of Scriptural corruption. What is ironic is that the Koran contains a number of textual corruptions.

Yes, it is true that the Septuagint and Masoretic texts are different. For example, the book of Esther in the Septuagint is significantly longer.

And there are obviously some minor corruptions of the Hebrew text: the Masoretic text contains marginal notes (tiqqune sopherim) that point out corrections in a few places.

A well-known verse that is clearly corrupted is 1 Samuel 13:1. However, every ancient text has at least some corruption – including the Septuagint. The first edition of the Sixto-Clementine Vulgate had to be recalled because it had so many misprintings. In fact, even recent books printed in the 20th Century have misprintings.

The main task of textual criticism is to recover the original text – this is why every major translation of the Bible – Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Orthodox – has footnotes that identify places where the text was corrected.
 
Augustine3 said:
A Muslim college claims there scriptures are corrupt and the differences between the Septuagint and Masoretic texts prove this. Are the differences merely matters of interpretation and grammar errors or is there more to it?

God bless,
Click to expand...
I was told Islam uses textual variants to “disprove” the Christian Scriptures although your post is the first time I’ve encountered it.

As we no longer have the autographs (original copies) we have to do textual criticism to find the text of scripture.

The Massoretes have more than one tradition due to the Babylonian exile so there were actually Hebrew text family trees that have different readings and interpretations. The two oldest complete texts are the Codex Leningrad (c.1006 ad) and Codex Allepo (c.960).

These are compared with translations such as the LXX (although this is actually a misnomer and really there was just a greek translation from Alexandria). These greek texts became so popular with the early church that the Jews did their own translations (Aquila, Theodotion which were more literal).

Literalness is not necessarily better, the LXX occasionaly paraphrases or interprets the Hebrew due to its audience.

For eg. the word translated virgin from the Hebrew literally means “young-woman” but in most cases this is identical with a virgin as a young unmarried woman. Parallel uses of the Hebrew confirm that occasionally it is intended to mean virgin.

I also heard that Islam burnt the texts that were different in any way from their koran… a very convienient way to solve the problem, isn’t it?
 
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