What are the Dead Sea Scrolls, what do they contain, and what is their significance?
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A lot of people think the Christian Bible getting new updates and translations is like a game of telephone. There was an original message, and each time we have a new version it gets further and further from the original. The Dead Sea Scrolls are a great explanation for why this is not true.
The King James version of the Bible was the first English translation, made in the year 1611. This translation was made from a Greek Bible, and that version was based on between 6-10 more recent manuscripts. This was the first English Bible, but is likely one of the further from the original text versions, since it was based on fewer manuscripts that were more recent in history.
Just like in telephone, the closer we get to the start the more confident we are that the message is the same or similar to the original. Finding the Dead Sea Scrolls gave us some of the earliest manuscripts of the Bible writings that we have today. This allows Bible historians to compare texts, see what was mistranscribed or added later, and get a version closer to the original texts.
So finding a document like the Dead Sea Scrolls allow us to get Bible translations closer to the original writings, and it also helps take away the argument that it is one big game of telephone with accuracy getting worse and worse.
(It also takes away the argument that it was adjusted over time by those in power as a way to hold power over the people, but that’s a longer and separate conversation.)
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