What Are The Dead Sea Scrolls? SeanMcDowell.org

The Dead Sea Scrolls are the most significant archaeological discovery of the 20th century. What do they mean for the reliability of the Bible? Sean briefly tells the story of their discovery and how they confirm the accurate transmission of the Old Testament.

[justine]

Thank you Dr. Sean for God’s work through you

[joehuang]

Thanks for the elaborate introduction to such a valuable history evidence supporting OT bible reliability! Amazed! Do you manage to discuss about the evidences supporting the resurrection of Jesus in these 5-minutes series?

[huskygold]

Okay well just a thought here here but what about when we're talking about it translating from Hebrew to Greek to Latin to English? Certain languages have certain words that other languages don't have. How do we know if the dead sea scrolls are accurate to the Hebrew ones of the past and the English ones of today?

[justine]

Thank you Dr. Sean for your work. You really are a big encouragement especially for the young Christians like me. You make the bible writings more edible for us.

[jamesarchbold]

With respect, others have come to different conclusions regarding the DSS and in a spirit of intellectual objectivity it might have been good to have those views alluded to.
ie, The Oxford Companion to Archaeology- While some of the Qumran biblical manuscripts are nearly identical to the Masoretic, or traditional, Hebrew text of the Old Testament, some manuscripts of the books of Exodus and Samuel found in Cave Four exhibit dramatic differences in both language and content. In their astonishing range of textual variants, the Qumran biblical discoveries have prompted scholars to reconsider the once-accepted theories of the development of the modern biblical text from only three manuscript families: of the Masoretic text, of the Hebrew original of the Septuagint, and of the Samaritan Pentateuch. It is now becoming increasingly clear that the Old Testament scripture was extremely fluid until its canonization around A.D. 100.

[username]

thanks for the info. I got sea-sick watching you talk though.

[nate]

on the dead sea scrolls, only Isaia was available from the bible we had today???

[Dragonart]

Are you lying for the cause of the gospel? Is it impossible to do apologetics without lying or telling half truths?

[infoguy]

if Jesus was such a great messanger you would think he would have written the bible himself or at the very least made sure the world had a clearly written clearly verifiable book. instead we are searching in caves.

[kitchfairman]

Who added to and took away from the ancient texts? Who has held the ancient scrolls for the last 60 years? You'll have to study ancient Hebrew if you don't want to take somebody else's word for it. Every jot every tittle!

[Aman]

Old testament teaching is almost similar to Quran. Christian relegion now has mix between monotheasm + pagan. Muslim love Jesus & Moses more than christian and jew.

[flipflop]

Ugh.... guys...we have the internet now. Why are you looking at some old scrolls?