December 17 The Remarkable Evidence from the Dead Sea Scrolls for the Reliability of the Biblical Record

Reason #17 Evidence from the Dead Sea Scrolls for the Reliability of the Biblical Record

The Dead Sea Scrolls strongly indicate that the Christian scriptures were not corrupted by years of copying, and that first-century Jewish people were already in possession of an ancient tradition having to do with an almighty, messianic Son of God.

Even the most caustic critics of the Bible have been forced to admit that the “Great Isaiah Scroll” in the Dead Sea Scroll collection (referred to in academic circles as 1QIsa), being dated well before the birth of Christ (300-150 B.C.), is virtually identical to our current copies of the book of Isaiah. Gleason Archer compared the Isaiah scroll to our current text of Isaiah and reported that the Isaiah scroll is “identical in more than 95 percent of the text. The remainder is chiefly of obvious slips of the pen and variations in spelling.” This discovery eloquently answers the oft-heard criticism about the Christian Bible being grossly corrupted over the centuries.

Similarly, the Dead Sea Scrolls have corrected those who scoffed at the New Testament (especially John’s Gospel) for supposedly blending Jewish messianic notions with pagan notions about a human person actually being the son of a god. No ancient Jew, the critics scolded, would have ever suggested that Messiah was the Son of God. That was a common pagan concept, they say, but one that would have never been tolerated in first-century Judaism. But then “The Aramaic Son of God Text” (scroll 4Q246) was discovered which states that Messiah “will be called the Son of God, and they will call him the Son of the Most High.” This excerpt powerfully demonstrates that some substantial fraction of Jewish people in the first century rightfully thought of their coming messiah as the son of God, and that the concept of Messiah being God’s son was not a later doctrine attached to Jesus by gentile Christians with roots in pagan thought.

Additionally, those who argue that the Jewish religion has never had any concept of Messiah actually being Deity were corrected by Dead Sea Scroll 4Q521 (circ. 30 B.C.) which states, “Heaven and earth will obey his Messiah.” This scroll powerfully demonstrates that Jewish people before the birth of Christ did indeed understand their messiah to be deity—the Master even of heaven.

The Dead Sea Scrolls strongly indicate that the Christian scriptures were not corrupted by years of copying, and that first-century Jewish people were already in possession of an ancient tradition having to do with an almighty, messianic Son of God.