The Great Scroll of Isaiah

While visiting the Shrine of the Book Museum in Jerusalem a year ago, I quickly hurried downstairs to look at the Great Isaiah Scroll, found among Qumran's Dead Sea Scrolls. Probably your eyes are glazing over and you're stifling a yawn... but consider this. How many ancient versions of Scripture are ever on display to the public? Almost none. The earliest portion I had ever seen was a scrap from the Gospel of John dating to the early 2nd Century AD on display at the British Library in London.

My hopes of seeing the Isaiah scroll were dashed as soon as I realized I was looking at a replica. The original is kept in a climate-controlled, bombproof vault and only small portions are ever put on display. [I believe Beth was able to see one in a special exhibit that toured the US.] If I had waited until summer, I could have seen a large portion that was placed on display at the Shrine of the Book in honor of Israel's 60th anniversary.

You may not appreciate the significance of this scroll to the preservation of Scripture. Dating to ca. 120 BC, it is by far the oldest complete copy of any biblical book. Our modern English versions of the OT are based upon the Masoretic texts, which came from a school of scribes and Torah scholars working from the 7th-11th Centuries AD, based in the cities of Tiberias, Jerusalem and Babylonia.

The Great Scroll of Isaiah found among the Dead Sea Scrolls (120 BC), is nearly identical to the Masoretic version of the Book of Isaiah (7th-11th Centuries AD). Even though 1000 years separates the two texts, the differences between them are amazingly minor! That should give us confidence in the accuracy of the texts used to translate our modern Old Testaments. What other ancient literature can even come close to claiming that?!