Below are the slides from Dr. James Tabor’s Countdown of the top 10 differences between the DSSs and the Masoretic Text that is the basis for most versions of the Bible. All italized text is from my transcript of his videos. His video series is:
Opening Comments Included:
- We don’t have complete copies of every book, [in the DSS’s found] but the book of Isaiah is complete, the book of Habakkuk is complete, and several others are complete. We have the Psalms and so forth. But if you put them all together, you can see it’s a substantial volume, and we could call it the Dead Sea Scroll Bible.
- Here’s a representation of the oldest Hebrew manuscript [see video] that goes into translating the Hebrew Bible. It’s called the Leningrad Codex. As I said, it’s from about 1000 AD or CE, the Middle Ages. And here is a copy of Isaiah from the Dead Sea Scrolls. And we date that usually to about 100 BC or BCE.
Re: No. 10 — The Masoretic Text says gathered together in one place whereas the DSS text “Gathered to their gatherings” in a sentence that was not included in the Masoretic text.
Re: No. 9 – Were there 70 offspring or 75?
Re: No. 8 — Was Goliath 9.5 feet or 6.5 feet tall?
Re: No. 7 — … this is actually a chunk of material that’s missing from our standard Hebrew Bible. And I think it was original, it somehow just got dropped out. And if you put it back in, this story in 1 Samuel makes a lot more sense.
Cut and pasted NRSV below for readability compared to the above dark slide.
1 Samuel 11:27B — Now Nahash, king of the Ammonites, had been grievously oppressing the Gadites and the Reubenites. He would gouge out the right eye of each of them and would not grant Israel a deliverer. No one was left of the Israelites across the Jordan whose right eye Nahash, king of the Ammonites, had not gouged out. But there were seven thousand men who had escaped from the Ammonites and had entered Jabesh-gilead. NRSV Footnote is: “10.27 Q Ms Compare Josephus, Antiquities VI.v.1 (68-71: MT lacks Now Nahash . . . entered Jabesh-gilead.”
Re: Number six is very important to Christians, because in the standard Hebrew text, it talks about David, King David is being persecuted. And he says, dogs surround me, a pack of evil ones closes in on me, like lions, and then there’s no verb, like lions, my hands and feet. So it’s understood like lions, what they claw me, they claw my hands and feet.
The slide for the sixth example has a typo…It should be Psalm 22:17 in the MT and in English Bibles is Psalm 22:16. The slide shows them the other way around.
But in the Dead Sea Scroll copy, dogs are all around a gang of evildoers encircles me, they have pierced my hands and feet. So you see the claws of the dogs are digging into your hands and feet. And Christians later use this in the New Testament to say, well, this isn’t just King David, this actually prophetically refers to Jesus, because his hands and feet were pierced.
Re No. 5 — Now we’ve known long before the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered, that some versions of translations of the Hebrew Bible, such as the Septuagint, we call it the LXX, the Greek translation of the Hebrew has that extra Psalm. It’s just that our oldest Hebrew copy from the Leningrad Codex 1000 AD or CE doesn’t have that Psalm. It’s an extra Psalm. And it’s described to David, and he’s talking about fighting with Goliath. He was small, youngest in his father’s house, he tended his father’s sheep, talks about my hands made a heart, my fingers fashioned a lyre.
It’s kind of biographical. And then he says, and who will declare it to my Lord, the Lord himself, he hears. It was he who sent his messenger and took me from my father’s sheep, and anointed me with anointing oil, remember, to make him king. My brothers were handsome and tall, but the Lord wasn’t pleased with them. I went out to meet the Philistine, that’s Goliath, and he cursed me by his idols. But I drew his own sword and beheaded him and removed reproach from the people of Israel.
So there’s a Psalm that recounts the story of David and Goliath. And it occurs in quite a few versions, but it’s not in our oldest copy of the Hebrew Bible. These are all translations. But should it be there? Does it go back anciently? Well, the Dead Sea Scrolls are the oldest thing we have. There is a Psalm 151 in two copies of the Dead Sea Scroll, two versions, one is A, one is B. So the Dead Sea Scrolls do have the extra Psalm. But as you read it, first of all, you can see that it’s a lot longer. And it does start and sounds kind of similar. “I was smaller than my brothers”. “His father made him the shepherd of a flock” and so forth. And he made musical instruments. But as you go on down, this is not about Goliath. This is about Samuel, the prophet Samuel anointed him and chose him, even though his brothers were handsome and tall, and they had beautiful hair, the Lord did not choose them. But he set and fetched me from behind the flock and anointed me and so forth, and made him king. And Psalm 151b goes on with even more.
And it does seem to talk about the Goliath story of slaying the giant. But this is a completely different. Should we add it to the Bible? Is it an extra Psalm? Why not? There are some new additions of the Bible with the Apocrypha, where they have put Psalm 51.
Re: No. 4 – The idea of his soul seeing light is not in the Masoretic Text. It just says he will see the suffering of his soul. But to see light, or, is very, very different. It’s very clear in the scrolls. What that would mean, it was interpreted probably by Second Temple groups that might have used a text like this to maybe mean resurrection, because toward the end, it talks about him seeing his offspring and rejoicing and so forth, and dividing the spoil.
And so you could see how the Dead Sea Scroll Group would think that their teacher, who they felt fulfilled this, the teacher of righteousness, they called him, and he was their leader, and they saw him as a kind of a new Moses. But they would feel that this person maybe is gonna suffer and be buried, but also see light. And I cover that in my lecture, Dead Messiahs Who Don’t Return, because they expected him to return, and he simply didn’t.
Re: No 3 — The [third] one is a couple of verses. It’s in what’s called the Song of Moses, and it’s Deuteronomy 32. So if you go to Deuteronomy chapter 32, and you can see down at verse eight, a very well-known verse that says, “‘When the Most High separated “‘or gave to the nations their inheritance, “‘he separated humankind, “‘and he set the bounds of the peoples “‘according to the number of the children of Israel.'” That’s the Masoretic text. That’s probably what the translation says that most of you are reading, depending on which one you’re reading. However, in the Dead Sea Scroll portion, it says, according to the sons of Elohim, the children of God, and it uses Elohim.
Isn’t that interesting? Because Elohim is also used in the Moses Scroll, as you know. Many of you know who’ve read about it or read the book. So the sons of Elohim.
Now, the sons of Elohim could be considered the children of Israel, I suppose, but because of another verse in this same chapter, or in the same song, if you go down to verse 43, it’s pretty clear that it’s talking about the sons of God, or the bene Elohim, as it is in Hebrew, that are the hosts that surround God. Psalm, did I say Psalm 82? Remember, it talks about how God sits and is surrounded by all of these gods, or Elohim.
So here’s what verse 43 says in the Dead Sea Scrolls, and this would be 4Q Deuteronomy also. K4, the copy of Deuteronomy. It reads like this. This is gonna be different from what you have if you have the Masoretic text.
Rejoice, O heavens, together with him, and bow down to him, all you gods, for he will avenge the blood of his sons, his children, his Banim, and will render vengeance to his enemies, and will recompense those who hate him, and will atone for the land of his people.
And so it’s actually talking about bow down to him, you gods, this reference to you gods, or in the Septuagint even has sons of God, which seems again to be these ruling powers that are spoken of a number of times in the Hebrew Bible.
Re: Deuteronomy 5:12. It’s on page 154 in this Dead Sea Scrolls Bible. And it has to do with the 10 words. So verse 12 does in fact say, “‘Observe the Sabbath day, keep it holy, “‘as the Lord commanded you.'” And it’s actually the divine name, YHVH, which they write in paleo Hebrew, by the way. “‘Six days you will labor and do all your work, “‘but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God.'” Now, in Deuteronomy, you have this idea that the reason you do this is because God brought the people of Israel out of Egypt. And that’s also in Exodus 31 as the reason.
But as you know, there’s also the idea that God has commanded you to keep the Sabbath. “‘For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth “‘in the sea and all that is in them, “‘and rested the seventh day, “‘so that the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.'” Now, that’s not in the Masoretic text at this spot of Deuteronomy.
It is in the Moses scroll. So there’s the example. Now, there’s one, this, the Dead Sea Scroll copy, it’s actually 4Q Deuteronomy, it’s called, from cave four, it’s a fragment of Deuteronomy. It has the idea that the Sabbath goes back to the creation. So it’s connecting to Genesis 1 and 2 in the same way that the Moses scroll does. And if you compare Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5, you can see the two versions. So this could be seen as an attempt to harmonize, like let’s give both reasons. But on the other hand, it could also be seen as a tradition the Dead Sea Scroll group is preserving that would be older than the later tradition that we know as the Masoretic text.
Re: No.1 – Note there is only one Messiah in the Masoretic Text. In the DSS version there are two messiahs as there are in Zachariah 6.
