Is it true?
The Old Testament and the Dead Sea Scrolls
A thousand-year jump back in time, and what it showed about the Hebrew Bible.
Before 1947, the oldest complete Hebrew manuscripts of the Old Testament came from around a thousand years after Christ. People could fairly ask how much the text had changed.
Then shepherds found scrolls in caves near Qumran by the Dead Sea. Over the next years about 235 biblical manuscripts turned up, dating from the third century BC to the first century AD. Every book of the Hebrew Bible except Esther is represented.
The most famous is the Great Isaiah Scroll, a complete copy of Isaiah about a thousand years older than the copies scholars had before. It is generally consistent with the standard Hebrew text and has all 66 chapters in the same order. It also has many small differences, mostly spelling, and some other scrolls show that in this period the text of a few books still varied. That is the honest picture: remarkable faithfulness, with real but mostly small variation.
Found 1946-1956
Bedouin shepherds found the first scrolls in a cave near Qumran between late 1946 and early 1947. Searches went on until 1956.
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Every book but Esther
About 235 biblical texts were found, with parts of every book of the Hebrew Bible except Esther, from between the third century BC and the first century AD.
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The Great Isaiah Scroll
Dated to about 125 BC, it contains all of Isaiah and is about 1,000 years older than the oldest Hebrew manuscripts known before. It is kept at the Shrine of the Book in the Israel Museum.
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How close is it?
It is generally consistent with the standard Hebrew (Masoretic) text, though it has over 2,600 small differences, mostly spelling and word order. Some other Isaiah scrolls from Qumran are even closer to the later text.
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My verses
The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God stands forever.
But He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed. We all like sheep have gone astray, each one has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid upon Him the iniquity of us all.
Then Jesus came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up. As was His custom, He entered the synagogue on the Sabbath. And when He stood up to read, the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to Him. Unrolling it, He found the place where it was written: “The Spirit of the Lord is on Me, because He has anointed Me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent Me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” Then He rolled up the scroll, returned it to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fixed on Him, and He began by saying, “Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”
Your word, O LORD, is everlasting; it is firmly fixed in the heavens.
Further reading
Links open independent sources, not church websites.