The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Origins of the Bible (Studies in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Related Literature

by Eugene Ulrich

The Dead Sea Scrolls from Qumran provide the oldest, best, and most direct witness we have to the origins of the Hebrew Bible. Prior to the discovery of the Scrolls, scholars had textual evidence for only a single, late period in the history of the biblical text, leading them to believe that the text was uniform. The Scrolls, however, provide documentary evidence a thousand years older than all previously known Hebrew manuscripts and reveal a period of pluriformity in the biblical text prior to the stage of uniformity.

In this important collection of studies, Eugene Ulrich, one of the world's foremost experts on the Dead Sea Scrolls, outlines a comprehensive theory that reconstructs the complex development of the ancient texts that eventually came to form the Old Testament. Several of the essays set forth his pioneering theory of "multiple literary editions," which is replacing older views of the origins of the biblical text.

The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Origins of the Bible represents the leading edge of research in the exciting field of Scrolls studies.

Genres: Biblical Studies, Judaism, Religion, History

327 pages, Paperback

First published May 31, 1999

Reviews

[Rodney Harvill · Rating 3 out of 5]

At the outset, I want to make it clear that I am a layman, an engineer. I read this book to better understand the implications of the Dead Sea Scrolls on our understanding of the history of the Old Testament text, and my review will reflect these points.

If anything, this book impresses me as an example of applied textual criticism. Dr. Ulrich compares samples of the Qumran biblical texts to:

• Masoretic texts
• Septuagint
• Vulgate
• Josephus

He may have also used the Samaritan Pentateuch, but I cannot remember. I found his use of Josephus intriguing. Back when I was a young adult, I read the works of Josephus and noticed some interesting details in his Antiquities that either were not present in the Old Testament (e.g. Isaac’s age when Abraham was commanded to offer him up as a burnt offering) or differed from it (e.g. the duration of Solomon’s reign). One option for his source is a text, no longer extant, that differed from the Masoretic text, and that was Dr. Ulrich’s conclusion. Regardless, it makes as much sense to consider Josephus in Old Testament criticism as it does to consider the church fathers. Their quotations of the Bible represent a window into its form in their day.

Dr. Ulrich criticizes early text critics for focusing on the Masoretic text and ignoring the Septuagint and the Samaritan Pentateuch. It wasn’t until the Qumran discoveries that scholars had access to Hebrew texts analogous to parts of the Septuagint that differ, sometimes significantly, from the Masoretic text. At that point, according to Dr. Ulrich, they began to take more seriously the Septuagint and the Samaritan Pentateuch as evidence for alternative Hebrew text traditions. Given that parts of the Western text tradition of the New Testament differs significantly from others such as Alexandrian or Caesarian, it shouldn’t be a surprise to see similar phenomena associated with the Hebrew Old Testament, and this begs a question. Why? Just as scientists examining forensic evidence, from crime scene investigators to archaeologists to paleontologists, are capable of coming up with different explanations, sometimes radically different, I suspect that there are multiple possible explanations for the different text traditions. Dr. Ulrich theorizes that the text might have been stable for a while until a scribe revised it to make it more relevant. I am not quite comfortable with this explanation. Given that Origen made a go at establishing a hypothetical original text and probably only added to the confusion for later scholars, something Dr. Ulrich considered to be a catastrophe, why might that not have happened with Hebrew scribes in the distant past? Why might they not have seen additional records that they felt had been overlooked? I am sure there are a multitude of potential explanations and am open to other ideas. As it is, the manuscript evidence is slim to non-existent; so, any explanation is necessarily tentative, at best.

If you want to get the most out of this book, I recommend familiarity with biblical Hebrew and Greek as Latin. Because the Qumran Hebrew texts are not pointed, be ready to look at unpointed Hebrew. It was quite interesting trying to read it.

[Lindsay · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is another book I reached for during my faith crisis, and it was a great follow up to What is the Bible? This one is more technical and scholarly in nature, but was still incredibly interesting. Turns out there are plenty of variations among the hundreds and hundreds of versions we have of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The author explains the kinds of differences (additions, absences, spelling and expositionary nuances) and why the scribes would have included these changes. The story behind why is helpful to me as a hopeful Christian in need of more research. There were plenty of parts in the book that went completely over my head, though, like the parts that were entirely in Hebrew. There's plenty of jargon in the book, but I was able to glean a good deal of information, especially in the first 2-3 chapters, which I'd recommend to anyone interested in the Old Testament for any reason.

[Hany Abdelmalek · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very challenging book about the DDS effect on textual criticism and our understanding of how Scriptures developed.