From: mangoe@cs.umd.edu (Charley Wingate)
Subject: Re: A Little Too Satanic
Organization: U of Maryland, Dept. of Computer Science, Coll. Pk., MD 20742
Lines: 43

Jon Livesey writes:

>So why do I read in the papers that the Qumram texts had "different
>versions" of some OT texts.   Did I misunderstand?

Reading newspapers to learn about this kind of stuff is not the best idea in
the world.  Newspaper reporters are notoriously ignorant on the subject of
religion, and are prone to exaggeration in the interests of having a "real"
story (that is, a bigger headline).

Let's back up to 1935.  At this point, we have the Masoretic text, the
various targums (translations/commentaries in aramaic, etc.), and the
Septuagint, the ancient greek translation.  The Masoretic text is the
standard Jewish text and essentially does not vary.  In some places it has
obvious corruptions, all of which are copied faithfully from copy to copy.
These passages in the past were interpreted by reference to the targums and
to the Septuagint.

Now, the septuagint differs from the masoretic text in two particulars:
first, it includes additional texts, and second, in some passages there are
variant readings from the masoretic text (in addition to "fixing"/predating
the various corrupted passages).  It must be emphasized that, to the best of
my knowledge, these variations are only signifcant to bible scholars, and
have little theological import.

The dead sea scroll materials add to this an ancient *copy* of almost all of
Isaiah and fragments of various sizes of almost all other OT books.  There
is also an abundance of other material, but as far as I know, there is no
sign there of any hebrew antecdent to the apocrypha (the extra texts in the
septuagint).  As far as analysis has proceeded, there are also variations
between the DSS texts and the masoretic versions.  These tend to reflect the
septuagint, where the latter isn't obviously in error.  Again, though, the
differences (thus far) are not significant theologically.  There is this big
expectation that there are great theological surprises lurking in the
material, but so far this hasn't happened.

The DSS *are* important because there is almost no textual tradition in the
OT, unlike for the NT.
-- 
C. Wingate        + "The peace of God, it is no peace,
                  +    but strife closed in the sod.
mangoe@cs.umd.edu +  Yet, brothers, pray for but one thing:
tove!mangoe       +    the marv'lous peace of God."