By James Thatcher
The ancient Dead Sea Scrolls came to life for many students for an hour Thursday morning as Old Testament scholar Donald W. Perry, a translator of the scrolls for the last 10 years, gave a lecture on variant readings between the scrolls and the King James Old Testament.
?None of these will change one?s faith,? Perry said, but he noted that many of the differences do have theological implications.
Discovered in the late 1940s, the Dead Sea Scrolls contain the Hebrew Bible and several other books. In many cases the books are older copies of the traditional Jewish text, which is the basis for most Christian Old Testaments.
Perry was invited to help translate the texts in 1994 and worked on the books of Samuel and Isaiah. Showing various lines of the Hebrew scrolls to the audience, Perry explained some of the divergences from the traditional Bible.
?There are quite a few [theological differences],? Perry said. ?I hesitate to be the forerunner on that; I do present some at conferences, but I don?t want to be the guy who disrupts the world community of scholars.?
An interesting example is the messianic passage in the 22nd Psalm, where the difference of a single letter changes ?they have pierced my hands and feet? to ?like a lion are my hands and feet.?
The Dead Sea Scrolls reflect the former; Perry said their text is older and probably more authentic in this case. Another passage he pointed out in the scrolls
gives more credit to a woman, Hannah, who speaks on the Lord?s behalf in the book of Samuel.
The audience of about 60 gathered in the Humanities building was curious to see other examples as well.
Those that followed were more innocuous but still interesting?was Goliath seven feet tall (DSS) or nine feet (King James Version)? It may have been a simple transcription error, or perhaps a copyist was making David seem more heroic, according to Perry.
Professor Perry showed the audience certain psalms and poetic passages that would seem to fit right in with the current Bible but aren?t included?perhaps having been lost. The DSS also includes a line missing from the 111th psalm, which was written to correspond to the Hebrew alphabet but is missing a letter in the KJV. Perry additionally pointed out an entire paragraph at the beginning of First Samuel not included in the current Bible that seems to give more context to the passage.
More controversial are whole books not included in the Bible, such as the ?Temple Scroll? which some have argued is the sixth book of Moses. The DSS text of Jeremiah also differs by about 20 percent from the one used today, Perry said.
While Perry prefers some of the DSS readings, he is hesitant to prescribe what ?should? and ?shouldn?t? be included in
