Journal: Southern Baptist Journal of Theology
Volume: SBJT 24:3 (Fall 2020)
Article: Listening To The Dead Sea Scrolls
Author: Anthony M. Ferguson

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Listening To The Dead Sea Scrolls

Anthony M. Ferguson

Anthony M. Ferguson is lead pastor at 11th Street Baptist Church, Upland, California, and adjunct professor at Gateway Seminary, Ontario, California. He received his BA from California Baptist University, Riverside, California, and his MDiv, ThM, and PhD from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky. He is a contributor to the Evangelical Textual Criticism Blogspot. His publications have appeared in journals such as the Journal of Biblical Literature, the Journal of the Evangeilcal Theological Society, Presyterion, and the Southeastern Theological Review. He and his wife, Kristen, have two children: Asher and Lyla.

Introduction

In early 1947, Muhammad ed-Dib stumbled upon the most significant archeological find of the twentieth century.1 A stray rock, likely thrown to guide the Bedouin herds, smashed a pot in a newly eroded cave. Frightened but intrigued, the Bedouin returned the following day to investigate the cave contents; and so, the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls began. Over the next decade, Bedouin and scholars would discover roughly 1,000 manuscripts (most of which exist as fragments) in eleven caves from Qumran and at several other Judean Desert sites such as Masada.2 Scholars classify approximately 225 of these manuscripts as biblical texts.3 Four characteristics of these biblical texts make them especially important to our understanding of the OT’s history during the Second Temple period (516 BC-AD 70).

First, these manuscripts are ancient (i.e., third century BC to the second century AD).4 Second, most of these manuscripts are written in the OT’s original languages (i.e., Hebrew and Aramaic). Third, collectively, these texts preserve thousands of differences compared to the Jewish canonical text known as the MT (Masoretic Text).5 Fourth, despite the vast number

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of textual variants, several of these texts preserve a high, and even very high, degree of similarity to the MT. These four points are facts. These are ancient Hebrew and Aramaic texts. Many differ much from the MT, and yet, many correspond closely to the MT.

Emanuel Tov’s classification grid for categorizing the biblical manuscripts from Qumran illustrates point #3 well.6