The Impact of the Dead Sea Scrolls on Our Bible

That was the title of the latest lecture at the Univ. of MT. in the President's Lecture Series. My friends, Blake & Karen, invited me to a light supper of delicious pumpkin soup, salad & zucchini bread before we attended Eugene Ulrich's lecture together. (If I get the pumpkin soup recipie, I'll share it.) The Montana Theatre was packed with every seat taken & the steps on both sides used for seats to hear this professor of Hebrew Scripture & Theology from the Univ. of Notre Dame. Professor Ulrich has spent much of his career piecing together Dead Sea scroll fragments, translating & studying them. He also has helped to create a couple of our modern Bible translations. Eugene speaks & reads 12 languages, including French, Spanish, German, Hebrew, Arabic, Aramaic, Syriac etc. I found his lecture informative & insightful & far too short, although it was an hour, with a 30-45 min. question & answer session afterward. Here is some of what I learned:

. The Essene Qumran community existed for about 200 years - 140 B.C. to 68 A.D. - according to various dating methods. The common rooms have been dug up in recent years by archeologists. The Essenes themselves lived in tents & caves around these common rooms. The site has revealed an elaborate water storage system, with attached rooms for ritual bathing - mikvahs. Water is scarce in the Judean Wilderness so this system is understandable. There are also areas for ceremonial meals and for scribal work. Various scribal instruments have been found, as well.

. Professor Ulrich has worked with scrolls from 3 main Qumran caves: #1, 4 & 11. They all contained similar scrolls & in the same number of copies. Most of the scrolls were of parchment or animal skins/leather. One copper scroll was also found. The leather fragments are the most difficult to work with, since the ink is black & the leather has aged to a dark brown or black. The fragments are first sorted by penmanship to get the same scribe. Then compared to later manuscipts to put together sentences & paragraphs. The Masoretic & Samaritan Pentateuch texts were used the most for comparison. Josephus' work was also used frequently.

. The caves were very stable in humidity (low) & temperature (moderate) although the heat or cold or rain outside could become quite inclement! Each of the 3 main caves has a similar library of Biblical scrolls, other scrolls of the period like apocraphal books & some scrolls of writing by the Essenes. The Biblical scrolls were found in the same % in each cave. All the books except Esther & Nehemiah have been found in the Qumran caves. Three books are highly represented by numerous copies. Psalms with about 35 copies per cave, Deuteronomy with the low 30's & Isaiah with the mid-teens of copies per cave. Interestingly these books are the most quoted texts by Yeshua, Matthew & other writers of the New Testament.

. In comparing the copies & in comparing these oldest texts with later texts over the last few years, over a thousand or more variations & differences have been sited in each book. They are mostly grammar or spelling differences. Not even one of the variations affects our theology!! The Holy Spirit had to have superintended all the scribal work for this to be the result. Professor Ulrich didn't state it this way, but talked about the different slants in perspective in some copies, yet with an amazing sameness in meaning!!

. Prof. Ulrich handled the ?s very well, demonstrating his scholarship & enormous grasp on the Scriptures & related literature.