The History of the Old Testament

&

Dead Sea Scrolls

A Booklet Summary

By

Marc W. Andersen, Ph.D.

Table of Contents

prologue	3

1.	The Greek Septuagint (LXX)	4

2.	the Samaritan Pentateuch	5

3.	The Masoretic Text	6

4.	The Latin Vulgate	8

5.	COMPARISONS OF THE OLD TESTAMENTS	9

5.1.	Canon	9

5.2.	Deuterocanon	10

5.3.	Apocrypha	11

5.4.	Pseudepigrapha	11

6.	The Dead Sea Scrolls	12

prologue

This booklet is a collection of summaries of topics and terms all relating to the history of the old testament. My purpose is to help novices such as myself understand the complex world of biblical study. In most cases I do not provide references however the sources I use are mostly well-vetted such as Wiki and online Catholic of Jewish Encyclopedias. If a reader is interested in a source cutting and pasting the text into Google Search will likely point to it.

Finally, my content here does not benefit from millions of reviewers like my source sites such as Wiki. I therefore ask to use caution in reusing any content for educational purposes. Please feel free to contact me with your comments, corrections, or suggested edits at my e-mail at the bottom of any page.

The Greek Septuagint (LXX)

The Septuagint (LXX) Old Testament is a Greek translation of the original Hebrew & Aramaic Bible. Composed in 250 BC during the time of Alexander the Great it is the “

oldest” of all Bibles. The legend of its creation, as recorded by the Greek Epistle of Aristeas in 2nd century BC, began with the Greek Egyptian king Ptolemy II [309-246 BC] requesting a copy of the Jewish Bible for his famous library in Alexandria. The [proto] old Hebrew language of the Bible was no longer a

common language, especially for the “Diaspora” [Jews living outside the Holy Land], and with Greek being the language of the times, a translation of the Hebrew bible into Greek was timely. According to the story, Eleazar, the Jerusalem High Priest at the time, sent 72 scholars, 6 from each tribe, to Alexandria to work on the translation. Using the available “

source” Hebrew scrolls, and working individually, they were said to end up with 72 of the exact same translations, a claim that almost necessitates a

Divine intervention. It is unknown how many books of Scripture were included in the first Greek translation and many scholars believe it was only the “

Torah”, the first 5 books of the Tanakh / Old Testament, with the remaining books added later. Because of the number of scholars Christians came to call the resulting bible the “Septuagint" or “LXX” which is Greek for

70. While the Septuagint bible is often portrayed as the “bible for the man on the street”, and as the version used by Jesus [and the prophets] in the New Testament era, others

dispute this claim. Along with Hebrew and Aramaic, text fragments of a “

putative” Septuagint [version] in Greek were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls which date 150 BC to 65 AD. The oldest surviving complete or near complete copies of the Septuagint, the Codex Sinaiticus and the Codex Vaticanus, date to 350 AD. The content [books] of the Septuagint, as well as other [Old testament] bibles are discussed in more detail below, but suffice to say the Septuagint includes at least 7 books [as scripture] that are found in the modern Catholic Bible but are not included in the Masoretic Text Hebrew Bible or Masoretic-derived Christian or Protestant bibles.

the Samaritan Pentateuch

Another ancient bible often cited along with the Masoretic and Septuagint is the Samaritan Pentateuch. While the Samaritans only represent a very small population their bible is important as it one of the oldest bibles that has been preserved thus its content, as with the Septuagint, can be compared to [much] later versions like the Jewish Masoretic Text. It has been said there are some six thousand differences between the Samaritan Pentateuch and the Jewish Masoretic Text. Most are minor spelling or grammar but others are significant such as the uniquely Samaritan commandment to construct an altar on Mount Gerizim. Nearly two thousand of these textual variations agree with the Greek Septuagint. The Samaritan Pentateuch was written in an older script than the Masoretic text called Ashuri [from Hebrew Asshur ‘Syria’] and was based on the Babylonian Aramaic alphabet which was later developed into the modern Hebrew alphabet. Frank Moore Cross, a Harvard scholar, described the Samaritan Pentateuch as a local document and suggested that Israelites who emigrated to Egypt would have taken ‘this’ version with them thus possibly explaining its close ties with the Septuagint [versus the Masoretic Text which was developed [much later] from the exiled Babylonian Jewish community]. The Dead Sea Scrolls texts agreed with the Samaritan version [of Mount Gerizim] as opposed to the Temple being in Jerusalem at Mount Ebal as stated in the Masoretic text. Most Jewish rabbis reject the Samaritan Pentateuch because it is written in an obscure paleo-Hebrew script. Of the three most ancient Old Testament texts only the Septuagint and Samaritan Pentateuch pre-date the advent of Christ as well as the Masoretic text. The oldest extant copy of the Samaritan Pentateuch is 1065 AD.

The Masoretic Text

The following is in part adopted from https://www.agapebiblestudy.com/documents/Is%20the%20Catholic%20Old%20Testament%20Accurate.htm

The Masoretic Text is the authoritative Hebrew and Aramaic text of the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) in Rabbinic Judaism and defines the Jewish canon and its precise letter-text, vocalization, accentuation, and concise margin notes to ensure clarity of meaning. It was primarily created [copied, edited, and distributed] between 600 to 900 AD. In the time of the Masoretic Text Christianity continued to gain ground and spread from Jerusalem, Rome and its provinces, and Europe. During this time rabbinic scholars from the established schools in Palestine [Jerusalem and Tiberius] and Mesopotamia [Babylonia] sought to standardize the text of the Hebrew Bible. The Jewish scholars in these schools saw themselves as the continuation of the ancient scholars called scribes who had maintained the accuracy of the sacred text over time. Known as the Masorites, a title derived from the word "masorah" meaning "tradition”, these scholars set out to translate the different versions in Greek and other post-Temple translations back into a standardized form of Hebrew. Originally the Hebrew language was written only in consonants, as were most ancient languages, so to ensure a better translation vowel signs were added for the first time to the Hebrew words. This new standardized text also included

marginal notes to ensure an accurate and consistent interpretation of passages. The process of compiling and re-translating back into the original Hebrew language served to ‘reset’ and ‘fix’ the Hebrew canon resulting in the current day Tanakh or “Masoretic Text”. While the official ‘fixing’ of the Hebrew bible as the Masoretic Text took place well after the time of Christ and Christianity, Jewish tradition suggests that the process of canonization of the Hebrew bible took place much earlier between 200 BC and 200 AD with a

popular position that the Torah was canonized c. 400 BC, the Prophets c. 200 BC, and the Writings c. 100 AD, perhaps at a hypothetical

Council of Jamnia. The Book of Nehemiah writes that the priest-scribe

Ezra brought the Torah to Jerusalem after exile in Babylon under the Persian emperor Cyrus the Great [539-530 BC].

After the Reformation and invention of the

printing press, western churches began to favor the Masoretic text and the majority of bible translations utilized a single Masoretic manuscript, the text of the Leningrad [St. Petersburg] Codex which most scholars date to 1008 or 1010 AD. Today, the Masoretic text version is universally considered the “official” Old testament text and is used in nearly all English translations of western

Christian Old testaments such as the King James Bible, English Standard Version, New American Standard Version, and the New International Version.

The Latin Vulgate

The Latin Vulgate is credited as being the first translation of the Old Testament into Latin. Translated by

St. Jerome in AD 400 using the Hebrew

pre-Masoretic text, Jerome was said to be one of the most learned Biblical scholars of his time. He knew more about Hebrew Scriptures than any of his contemporaries. Even Jewish scholars, who had begun working on the Masoretic text [see previous “Masoretic Text”], visited Jerome in Bethlehem when they had difficulty reaching agreement on difficult passages. While several contemporaries of St. Jerome, among them the great theologian and Biblical scholar St. Augustine Bishop of Hippo [who also understood and translated Hebrew], supported the Septuagint and expressed concern over Jerome's use of “corrupted” Masoretic texts which varied from the Septuagint translation, Jerome over time had become to consider the text of the Septuagint as being faulty in itself, i.e. Jerome thought mistakes in the Septuagint text were not all by copyists, rather some were deliberate by the Seventy translators. Jerome thus

believed that the Hebrew text more clearly prefigured Christ than the Greek of the Septuagint. For over a thousand years (c. AD 400–1530) the Latin Vulgate was the most commonly used edition in Western Europe and with the invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg in 1440 was the first mass produced bible and the version brought to America by the Pilgrims. The Gutenberg Bible and movable type made the

reformation possible. The Council of Trent in 1546 declared the Vulgate authoritative in public lectures, disputations, sermons, and expositions. Indeed, for most Western Christians, especially Catholics, it was the only version of the Bible ever encountered, only truly being eclipsed in the mid 20th century.

COMPARISONS OF THE OLD TESTAMENTS

While there can be significant differences in wording and verses between different bibles [see related “Genesis by the Numbers”] we will see that the

Masoretic and Septuagint [and other] versions do not share the same number and identity of biblical books. There is a logic that led to the different content in the different bibles which is best understood by defining terms such as Canon, Deuterocanon, Apocrypha, and Pseudepigrapha.

Canon

A biblical canon is a set of texts (also called "books") which a particular Jewish or Christian community regards as part of the Bible. The English word canon comes from Greek kanōn, meaning "rule" or "measuring stick". While the set of texts can vary among denominations all use the term canon to describe their “official” books of their bible. The

non canon books, largely written during the

intertestamental period, are called Deuterocanon ["second” canon] by the Catholics or anagignoskomena "worthy of reading" by the Eastern Orthodox Churches, and Apocrypha meaning "hidden things" by the

Protestants. Some protestant Bibles- the English King James Bible and the

Lutheran Bible- include the Apocrypha in a separate section between the Old and New Testament. Many denominations recognize these books as good but not on the level of [canon] books of the Bible. Anglicanism considers apocrypha worthy to "read for example of life but not to be used to establish any doctrine". Luther referred to them as "not considered equal to the Holy Scriptures, but [...] useful and good to read."

While there may be disagreements on the definitions of Deuterocanon and Apocrypha books,

all Christian bibles share the same first five books called the “Torah” in Judaism or “The Pentateuch”. In addition to the first 5 books, all Western Christian Old Testaments contain the complete set of the 24 books of the Hebrew Tanakh, however depending on the denomination the cited total of books may be different due to the way they are split up. Eastern Orthodox Christians however accept all books of the Septuagint as canon, even the Deuterocanon [apocrypha] books not included in the Tanakh. The canon of the Catholic Church was first affirmed by the Council of Rome in AD 382. The canons of the Church of England and English Presbyterians were decided definitively by 1563.

Deuterocanon

Deuterocanon is the Catholic term used to describe the 7 books in the catholic bible which are included as canon in the Septuagint bible, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and/or the Assyrian Church of the East, however were not included in the Tanakh, Western Christian, or Protestant Old Testaments, all of which are based on the Masoretic [text]. The excluded books are ancient like other [scripture] books and most date from the second temple period when the Jews were in exile in Babylonia before the separation of Christians from Judaism. While the New Testament never identifies any of these books by name the apostles putatively quoted from the Septuagint,

which does include them. The 7 books are listed below.

Tobit

Judith

Baruch

Sirach (or Ecclesiasticus)

1 Maccabees

2 Maccabees

Wisdom

The status of the Deuterocanon books has been a source of disagreement that preceded the Reformation. Many believe that the Septuagint, originally compiled around 250 BC, did include these writings. Others argue that the Septuagint of even 100 AD did not contain these books and they were added later by Christians [see previous full discussion on the Septuagint]. The earliest extant manuscripts of the Septuagint, as well as old bibles like the Codex Vaticanus (4th century), Codex Alexandrinus (5th century), all contain the Deuterocanon books [and additions] but the number and identity of the books is not uniform. The ‘fixing’ or ‘canonization’ of the Hebrew bible as the 24 books we know as the Tanakh may have occurred as early as the

Hasmonean dynasty [140 BC to 37 BC] but was certainly fixed by

100 AD.

Apocrypha

Greek for “hidden away” or “non-canonical” the apocrypha are Jewish ancient writings which are not part of the accepted canon of the 24 book Hebrew Tanakh [Masoretic Text]. While the word is often used as a “catch all” for any books not included as scripture “apocrypha” has more complex origins and uses depending on the religion. For example the 7 aforementioned books called Deuterocanon by the

Catholic Church are called “apocrypha” by Jews, Protestants, and

Christians. Some Eastern Orthodox Churches include the 7 books as part of their scripture as well as other ancient biblical writings considered “Apocrypha” even by the Catholic Church [as they are not Deuterocanon] such as the Book of Enoch, Jubilees, the story of Susanna, Esdras.

Pseudepigrapha

Greek for "false credit", pseudepigrapha, like Deuterocanon and apocrypha, refers to ancient Jewish religious works that are not part of Tanakh or Catholic “second” (Deutero) canon. While often used as a “catch all” term for books that are spurious works ostensibly written by a biblical figure, Jewish tradition differentiates between

apocrypha and pseudepigrapha. The Catholic and Protestant Church does not use the word Pseudepigrapha and distinguishes only between the deuterocanonical and all other books which they call apocrypha [which in Catholic usage includes the pseudepigrapha]. The protestants call the 7 deuterocanonical books Apocrypha and all else pseudepigrapha. Examples of apocrypha (Catholics) or pseudepigrapha (Protestants) would be the Book of Enoch, the Book of Jubilees, both of which however are actual “canon” in Orthodox Tewahedo Christianity and the Beta Israel branch of Judaism. The Book of Daniel is a representative example of Pseudepigrapha. The book is an apocalypse wherein Daniel offers a series of predictions of the future and is meant to reassure the Jews of the period that the tyrant Antiochus IV Epiphanes would soon be overthrown yet there are strong reasons to believe it was not written by Daniel [“falsely attributed”] and was rather written by an unknown author centuries after Daniel's death.

The Dead Sea Scrolls

The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in the Qumran [region] Caves on the northern shore of the Dead Sea over a ten-year period beginning in 1946-1947. The scrolls are a collection of ancient biblical books and

copies of books. Written mostly on parchment (animal skins) and papyrus most of the scrolls had become fragments. Dating from

150 BC to 65 AD they represent the

oldest biblical documents in existence. All the books of the Hebrew Bible were found except for Nehemiah and the

Book of Esther. In addition to biblical books some 30% included known non-canonized or para-scripture [Deuterocanon, Apocrypha, Pseudepigrapha] such as the Book of Enoch,

Jubilees, Tobit, and the Wisdom of Sirach, Psalms 152–155, etc. The remaining approximately 30% were sectarian and specific to the Jewish group that wrote and stored them.

Almost all of the 15,000 scrolls and fragments are held in the Shrine of the Book at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. A complete list and the number of copies found for each biblical book is provided

here.

There has been much debate on ‘who’ wrote the scrolls. DNA analysis of the animal skins confirms the scrolls were written locally thus the dominant theory remains the scrolls were written and ultimately hid [in 65 AD] by the

Essenes, a sect of Jews living nearby. Others have argued that the scrolls were the product of Jews living in Jerusalem who hid the scrolls while fleeing from the Romans during the destruction of [the second Temple] and Jerusalem in 70 AD.

The initial 7 scrolls found by Bedouins in [what is now known as] cave 1 was The Great Isaiah Scroll, a second copy of Isaiah, Community Rule Scroll, Pesher on Habakkuk, War Scroll, Thanksgiving Hymns, and the

Genesis Apocryphon. The scrolls continued to change hands and

ultimately [all] the scrolls became the possession of the Israel authorities who then further drove the discovery and reconstruction process.

As the oldest and first biblical texts ever discovered, that were actually written in biblical times some of which preceded even Christianity, the Dead Sea Scrolls provided great insight to the ageless “accuracy’ question of what we today

call the bible. One citation [Wikipedia] states, “About 35% of the Dead Sea Scrolls’ biblical material matched almost exactly our current day Masoretic text. Another 5% each was represented by the Septuagint and Samaritan Pentateuch and the remaining 55% did not fully match any of the above.” While [many] scholars point out the similarities to support the accuracy of the Masoretic text [and our Old Testament] perhaps the greatest impact is in their differences. The following is taken in part from www.news.nd.edu “Dead Sea Scrolls yield major questions in Old Testament understanding”, November 13, 2000. The height of Goliath, per Samuel 17:4 was ’’six cubits and a span‘’ or 9 feet (3 meters) but a damaged Dead Sea scroll has him at ’’four cubits and a span,‘’ a mere

6.5 feet (2 meters). Deuteronomy 8:6 speaks of ’’fearing’’ God but a Dead Sea scroll uses the word ’’loving’’ instead. Still as [Frank] Cross Harvard historian puts it best, ‘’no 11th commandment was found’’ thus nothing has been found in the scrolls to challenge basic beliefs. Eugene Ulrich, professor of Hebrew at the University of Notre Dame and chief editor of the Dead Sea biblical materials commented regarding the many

copies found that he repeatedly encountered scrolls that ‘’did, and didn’t, look like what we call the Bible.” His conclusion was that in ancient times two or more differing

editions of many biblical books existed and all were regarded as Scripture [some examples are

here]. If Ulrich is on the right track we’ve got some major thinking to do acknowledges John H. Walton, a staunchly conservative professor at Chicago’s Moody Bible Institute. The problem as he sees it. If it could be demonstrated we have two biblical traditions arising independently of one another, instead of one being a revision or corruption of the other, then which one are you going to call God’s Word or the “original”?‘’ Personally, Walton thinks Ulrich’s conclusions are premature and is untroubled by any findings to date. The scrolls were written between 200 BC and 70 AD and in that same period rabbis had just begun establishing the standard of which [content] would be the basis for the Masoretic text. Should the Bibles used in churches, synagogues, and homes, be thoroughly revised to reflect all the variations? Not necessarily, says Ulrich, a lay Roman Catholic. But at least serious students should be reading a Bible with multiple options. And he insists that future Bible translations should be less wedded to the Masoretic Text and be open to alternate renditions. Walter Kaiser, president of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Massachusetts raises a key perhaps “the” question regarding ‘context’ for the scrolls. “We don’t know who wrote these scrolls. If the Dead Sea community was a separate marginal/fringe group [of Hebrews] should a cultic group set the norm?‘’ He warns that relying on non-Masoretic manuscripts could be ’’like going to the Branch Davidians of Waco”. A related issue is ‘’who” decides what is authoritative? He figures the ancient rabbis, ‘’those closer in time and knowledge obviously had a better shot in determining the best text than we do a 1000 years later.” He also contends that many of the Dead Sea Scrolls are simply too fragmented to support sweeping conclusions. Lawrence Schiffman of New York University, co-editor of Oxford’s ‘’Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls, thinks that for Judaism, Ulrich’s theorizing is irrelevant. “No other Bible besides the Masoretic Text has any authority. There is nothing in the scrolls that could possibly have any interest in terms of revising the biblical canon.” Schiffman is an Orthodox layman but says his attitude is also shared by more liberal Jews. He sees the variant editions as an issue only in Christianity where scholars try to reconstruct the best text from whatever source. In addition, he’s convinced the

Bible Jesus and his Jewish contemporaries knew was a Masoretic-derived text substantially the same as ours today. If the Masoretic version is the one and only true Old Testament, then the Dead Sea Scrolls are extremely good news for Bible believers, Jewish or Christian.

In summary the Dead Sea Scrolls provided for the first time evidence that the differences observed between Old testaments, such as the Septuagint or Masoretic text, may not be the result of

errors during translation rather may be due to different sources or “editions” having co-existed throughout ancient times until standardization and ‘fixing’ or canonization took place. Further, the implications of these different versions seems to fall heaviest upon evangelicals and fundamentalists who believe that the biblical books as originally written were “God-breathed” hence free from error. If so, as Ullrich and others challenge, which version of Jeremiah or Psalms [or Goliath’s height] is the correct one and which one the error? As one scholar [Kaiser] put it. “Some implications of the scrolls’ variations could be unsettling but ‘’Truth” should never upset anyone. If we think God is a God of truth real evidence ought

never be shunned.”