The Great Isaiah Scroll Research Paper
The Great Isaiah Scroll
Anonymous
Dead Sea Scrolls
Dr. Theresa Lafferty
April 30th, 2013
The Dead Sea Scrolls are the greatest Christian-related archeological find in history. All of the documents found here--biblical and non-biblical-- predate any biblical source we have at our disposal by almost a thousand years.1 Through the finding and interpretation of the scrolls, we can discover much about early Jews and the accuracy of current translations of the Bible.
In the winter of 1946-1947, the first seven of the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered by Bedouin shepherds tending their flocks near the area known as Qumran on the northwest side of the Dead Sea. One of the shepherds had apparently been throwing rocks, whether …show more content…
The fifty-four columns contain all sixty-six chapters of the Hebrew version of the biblical Book of Isaiah dating from ca. 125 BCE in the Hasmonean style of Hebrew.6, 7 It is about one thousand years older than the oldest manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible known to us before the scrolls ' discovery. The text of the Great Isaiah Scroll generally conforms to the Masoretic or traditional Hebrew version codified in medieval codices (all sixty-six chapters of the Hebrew version, in the same conventional order). At the same time, however, the two-thousand-year-old scroll contains alternative spellings, scribal errors, corrections, and, most fundamentally, many variant readings.8 Strictly speaking, the number of textual variants is well over 2,600, ranging from a single letter, sometimes one or more words, to a complete variant verse or …show more content…
The two principal compositions of which are the Book of Isaiah proper (chapters 1-39), containing the words of the prophet Isaiah himself, dating from the time of the First Temple, around 700 BCE.12 Then Second Isaiah (Deutero-Isaiah chapters 40-66), comprising the words of an anonymous prophet who lived some one hundred and fifty years later than the prophet Isaiah; around the time of the Babylonian exile and the restoration of the Temple in the Persian Period.13 By the time the Great Isaiah Scroll was copied, the book was already regarded as a single composition.14
Several prophecies appearing in the Book of Isaiah have become cornerstones of Judeo-Christian civilization. Perhaps the most renowned of these is Isaiah 's vision of universal peace at the End of Days: "And they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks: Nation shall not take up sword against nation; they shall never again know war" (2:4).15
The discovery of the Great Isaiah Scroll and the other Dead Sea documents has vastly helped with the interpretations of the words and ideas of the Bible. Whether this is a good or a bad thing, we may never know. People of the world may still never know if the stories or lessons of the past that have been passed down over thousands of years are really true, but all things worth being passed down have a grain of truth in their
Anonymous
Dead Sea Scrolls
Dr. Theresa Lafferty
April 30th, 2013
The Dead Sea Scrolls are the greatest Christian-related archeological find in history. All of the documents found here--biblical and non-biblical-- predate any biblical source we have at our disposal by almost a thousand years.1 Through the finding and interpretation of the scrolls, we can discover much about early Jews and the accuracy of current translations of the Bible.
In the winter of 1946-1947, the first seven of the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered by Bedouin shepherds tending their flocks near the area known as Qumran on the northwest side of the Dead Sea. One of the shepherds had apparently been throwing rocks, whether …show more content…
The fifty-four columns contain all sixty-six chapters of the Hebrew version of the biblical Book of Isaiah dating from ca. 125 BCE in the Hasmonean style of Hebrew.6, 7 It is about one thousand years older than the oldest manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible known to us before the scrolls ' discovery. The text of the Great Isaiah Scroll generally conforms to the Masoretic or traditional Hebrew version codified in medieval codices (all sixty-six chapters of the Hebrew version, in the same conventional order). At the same time, however, the two-thousand-year-old scroll contains alternative spellings, scribal errors, corrections, and, most fundamentally, many variant readings.8 Strictly speaking, the number of textual variants is well over 2,600, ranging from a single letter, sometimes one or more words, to a complete variant verse or …show more content…
The two principal compositions of which are the Book of Isaiah proper (chapters 1-39), containing the words of the prophet Isaiah himself, dating from the time of the First Temple, around 700 BCE.12 Then Second Isaiah (Deutero-Isaiah chapters 40-66), comprising the words of an anonymous prophet who lived some one hundred and fifty years later than the prophet Isaiah; around the time of the Babylonian exile and the restoration of the Temple in the Persian Period.13 By the time the Great Isaiah Scroll was copied, the book was already regarded as a single composition.14
Several prophecies appearing in the Book of Isaiah have become cornerstones of Judeo-Christian civilization. Perhaps the most renowned of these is Isaiah 's vision of universal peace at the End of Days: "And they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks: Nation shall not take up sword against nation; they shall never again know war" (2:4).15
The discovery of the Great Isaiah Scroll and the other Dead Sea documents has vastly helped with the interpretations of the words and ideas of the Bible. Whether this is a good or a bad thing, we may never know. People of the world may still never know if the stories or lessons of the past that have been passed down over thousands of years are really true, but all things worth being passed down have a grain of truth in their