Conclusion Of A Solid Basis For Confidence

In one study, scholars compared the 53rd chapter of Isaiah in the Dead Sea Scroll with the Masoretic text produced a thousand years later. The book A General Introduction to the Bible, explains the results of the study: " Of the 166 words in Isaiah 53, there are only seventeen letters in question. Ten of these letters are simply a matter of spelling, which does not effect the sense. Four more letters are minor stylistic changes, such as conjunctions. The remaining three letters comprise the word 'light,' which is added in verse 11, and does not affect the meaning greatly . . . Thus, in one chapter of 166 words, there is only one word (three letters) in question after a thousand years of transmission-and this word does not significantly change the meaning of the passage."

Professor Millar Burrows, who worked with the scrolls for years, analyzing their contents, came to a similar conclusion: "Many of the differences between the . . .Isaiah scroll and the Masoretic text can be explained as mistakes in copying. Apart from these, there is a remarkable agreement, on the whole, with the text found in the midieval manuscripts. Such agreement in a manuscript so much older gives reassuring testimony to the general accuracy of the traditional text. "Reassuring testimony" can also be given about the copying of the Christian Greek Scriptures. For example, the 19th -century discovery of the Codex Sinaiticus,, a vellum manuscript dated to the fourth century C.E., helped confirm the accuracy of manuscripts produced centuries later. A papyrus fragment of the Gospel of John, discovered in the district of Egypt, is dated to the first half of the second century C.E., less than 50 years after the original was written. It had been preserved for centuries in the dry sand. The text agrees with that found in much later manuscripts.

The evidence thus confirms that the copyists were, in fact, very accurate. Nevertheless, they did make mistakes. No individual manuscript is flawless-the Dead Sea Scroll of Isaiah notwithstanding. Even so, scholars have been able to detect and correct such departures from the original.

Next time:Correcting Copyists' Errors

A Book For All People, 1997