How much do you know about the Dead Sea Scrolls? This summer I’ve been reading an English translation of the parts of the Old Testament found in the scrolls. These are scrolls that were found beginning in 1947 that date back to the first century and in some cases two to three hundred years before Jesus. Prior to this discovery, the oldest Hebrew manuscript of the Old Testament we possessed was dated 1000 AD! So in one archeological find, we bridged a thousand years of biblical scholarship. One of the complete scrolls that was discovered was of the book of Isaiah. On Wednesday, I taught an overview of Isaiah at Narrow Gate men’s group. I studied to teach it out of the Dead Sea Scroll text. Other than a few grammatical differences that took place over a thousand years of copying the book, the Dead Sea and 1000 AD texts of Isaiah were virtually identical! That is how carefully the Bible was copied through the years. Today, most of the scrolls are contained in a special section of the Israel Museum called The Shrine of the Book. The roof of this part of the museum is in the shape of the lid of one of the clay jars in which the scrolls were discovered. I am providing a link for you to be able to listen to the talk I gave on Isaiah. (You also get to hear Biff Gore sing!) You might also want to look up the scrolls on the Internet. Wikipedia has a very good article that will give you a history of how they were found and what they contain.
https://vimeo.com/989843821
The Dead Sea Scrolls
