The Dead Sea Scrolls & Modern Translations of the Old Testament

By Harold Scanlin

This book contains a complete, detailed listing of all the biblical manuscripts and then explains how the findings have actually effected our modern translations of the Old Testament. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 084231010X
• ISBN13: 9780842310109
• Release Date: January 1993
• Publisher: Tyndale House Pub
• Length: 179 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 1.0" x 6.5"

Customer Reviews

Great resource on evolution and variance of Biblical text

This book is a pretty good resource, which documents the impact the discovery of Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS) made on the Bible, Bible translations and the field of textual criticism in general. The scope of the book includes only biblical manuscripts from Qumran. Pesharim and other sectarian texts which included biblical passages are not included in the scope of the book. His introductory material on DSS is pretty basic. At first Scanlin very briefly covers the discovery of DSS, chronology and dating of the manuscripts. The rest of the introductory chapter is devoted to the impact of DSS on textual criticism and translation of the Bible. He spends nearly 20 pages on this second part, discussing mainly the stability of the Masoretic text (MT) and when/whether to prefer variant readings from DSS or other sources when translating the Bible. Part 1 of the book is a description of Biblical Manuscripts. Here Scanlin goes beyond the scope of DSS and also includes other ancient manuscripts, namely manuscripts from Masada, Murabba'at, Nahal Hever and the Nash papyrus. He includes has a brief, but succinct overview of official publications in which these finds were published (first 9 volumes of DJD) and a few other publications. He also explains the naming and numbering convention for the scrolls, but uses only the former. Since many publications refer to DSS using the latter convention, e.g. 4Q47 instead of 4QJosh a, Scanlin should have included the numerical convention as well, even if only parenthetically. That would have made it a more complete resource, although it is very valuable as it is. Part 2 charts which chapters of Biblical books are found on which DSS or other manuscripts from the Dead Sea region, see previous paragraph. These charts are pretty useful, although once again they do not include Pesharim. Part 3 lists passages from OT which were influences, i.e. accepted variant readings from DSS over MT in modern English translations of the Bible. Per the author, all passages which had a significant influence are listed. At the end is an index of all Biblical passages, extensive bibliography, a map and several photos of DSS. Overall, it is a useful book and a great reference for study of variant readings of the biblical text from Qumran's manuscripts.

A Favorite Resource

In this book, Harold Scanlin has written a favorite resource of mine. Scanlin begins with a 38 page introduction to the Dead Sea Scrolls which I must admit that I have not done more than skim. (However there is a chart comparing the various approaches to the textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible.) That's because I want to get to the description of the biblical manuscripts. I want to know what the contents of the manuscripts were, when theywere dated, and what there significance was.Then I want to get into the third part of Scanlin's book so I can see some of the effects of the DSS on modern translations. For example, in Isa 49.12, the MT says that the people of Sinim will come to Zion. 1QIsaA tells us that the name is Syene which is better known to us today as the site of Aswan (the Aswan dam) or Elephantine in Egypt. Scanlin points out that the NAB, the NIV, and the RSV all follow the DSS reading.One might read Martin Abegg's _DSS Bible_ in order to find the variant readings among the biblical texts found among the DSS. In this book, one gets the chance to see how the DSS have been incorporated into English translations of the Bible.

Short but helpful

The first section regarding how the DSS have affected recent translations of the OT is helpful, though brief. A most helpful section is the textual charts that show which chapters of the OT are represented by which scrolls. This book is a great companion to the new "Dead Sea Scroll Bible: The Oldest Known Bible" (by Abegg, et.al. [Harper] 1999).