In addition to the various books of the Old Testament listed above, the DSS include a number of commentaries on individual books of the Old Testament13—including Isaiah, Habakkuk, Hosea, Micah, Nahum, and the Psalms—that reveal a striking method of biblical interpretation. In these commentaries, the passage of scripture is first quoted, followed by an interpretation. The author(s) of the commentary frequently liken the passage to the Qumran community of believers by arguing that its fulfillment had reference either to themselves or to contemporary events.

This page of column 34 of the Isaiah Scroll begins in the upper right-hand corner and should be read from right to left. It shows the use of paragraphs two thousand years ago. Marks like the three on the left-hand column (there are two x's and the other looks like a cowboy hat) are found throughout the text, but we do not know what they mean. On the fourth line from the bottom, between two lines, is an added word. A dot on each side indicates where the word was inserted to correct the mistake. (Photography by John C. Trevor)

For example, a passage in the Commentary on the Psalms quotes Psalm 37:10: "A little while and the wicked shall be no more; I will look towards his place but he shall not be there." The interpretation follows: "At the end of forty years {from the time that the commentary was written} the wicked will perish and not an [evil] man shall be found on the earth."14 In a passage in the Commentary on Habakkuk, the interest in the last days can also be seen: "And God told Habakkuk to write down that which would happen to the final generation, but He did not make known to him when time would come to an end."15

Several Apocryphal16 or Pseudepigraphic17 texts were excavated in the caves, including writings that were previously known to the world—Tobit, Sirach, a Letter of Jeremiah (Baruch 6), Psalm 151, Enoch (1 Enoch), Jubilees, and the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs. Other writings of an apocryphal nature were unknown to the world at the time of their discovery and represent new texts. These texts possess the names of or are generally affiliated with well-known Old Testament characters such as Noah, Jacob, Joseph, Amran, Moses, Joshua, Samuel, David, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, and Esther.18 These texts offer scholars a treasure chest of information into the socioreligious world of Second Temple Jews and their language, rituals, worship, etc.

Although the DSS biblical texts bring us one thousand years closer to the original words of the prophets, we still do not have the so-called autograph texts, that is, those which were penned by the prophets (or the scribes of the prophets) themselves. We possess copies of the apograph texts, which were created several hundred years after the autograph texts. Throughout the history of the various biblical texts, both the Old and the New Testaments, various errors have crept in—a fact that scholars have been aware of for centuries. The Jewish Talmud, which dates to the fifth century a.d., lists eighteen occasions when the scribes intentionally altered the Old Testament because they thought certain ideas showed disrespect for God, or because certain ideas disagreed with the scribes’ theological notion of who or what God is. These textual changes, called tiqqune sopherim (errors of the scribes) may be found in the following verses: Genesis 18:22; Numbers 11:15; 12:12; 1 Samuel 3:13; 2 Samuel 16:12; 20:1; 1 Kings 12:16; Jeremiah 2:11; Ezekiel 8:17; Hosea 4:7; Habakkuk 1:12; Zechariah 2:12; Malachi 1:13; Psalm 106:20; Job 7:20; 32:3; 2 Chronicles 10:16; and Lamentations 3:20.19

In this same light, James C. VanderKam notes that the Samaritan Pentateuch (the Samaritan version of the five books of Moses) "differs from the Masoretic Text in some six thousand readings; most of these are minor matters such as different spellings of words."20 A few variant readings in the Samaritan Pentateuch are not minor; rather, they represent intentional theological changes dealing with the temple and temple worship. Emanuel Tov presents evidence of such theological changes:

The main ideological change in [the Samaritan Pentateuch] concerns the central place of worship. In every verse in the Hebrew Bible in which Jerusalem is alluded to as the central place of worship, the Samaritans have inserted in its stead, sometimes by way of allusion, their own center, Mount Gerizim.21

The Samaritans believed that Mount Gerizim represented the temple of Israel, not the temple built by Solomon in Jerusalem. This Samaritan approach to the temple and temple worship becomes apparent in an examination of the Decalogue (Ten Commandments). Here the Samaritan Pentateuch alters the Decalogue so that the first of the Ten Commandments serves as a mere introduction, and adds a tenth commandment that refers "to the sanctity of Mount Gerizim."22

The New Testament, like the Old, was contaminated through long centuries of transmission. "There are over 5,200 Greek New Testament manuscripts, no two of which are alike. They come from different areas and communities in antiquity and that accounts for some differences."23 Bart D. Ehrman points out in his The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture that John Mill’s critical apparatus of the Greek New Testament makes reference to approximately 100 Greek manuscripts and shows "some 30,000 variant readings."24 As Ehrman demonstrates, many of the variant readings are intentional theological changes.

Even after the printing press was invented, errors still occurred in different printings of the Bible. The first edition of the King James Version (KJV), printed in 1611, contained a number of errors, some of which were corrected in the 1612 edition, followed by an additional 413 corrections and changes made in the 1613 edition. For instance, the 1611 edition read, "then cometh Judas" instead of "then cometh Jesus" (Matthew 26:36); "strain out a gnat" rather than the correct "strain at a gnat" (Matthew 23:24); and "approved to death" in place of "appointed to death" (1 Corinthians 4:9).25 As early as 1659, one scholar noted that some "20,000 errors . . . had crept into the six different editions printed in the 1650s."26

Joseph Smith was fully aware that errors existed in the text of the Bible, as is witnessed by his inspired contribution to biblical studies that we call the Joseph Smith Translation, by the Book of Mormon texts that parallel biblical passages (especially Isaiah), and by statements he made during his sermons. On one occasion the Prophet taught, "I believe the Bible as it read when it came from the pen of the original writers." He then detailed reasons why errors exist in the scriptures: "Ignorant translators, careless transcribers, or designing and corrupt priests have committed many errors."27

Causes of Textual Corruptions

Texual critics categorize the three major types of textual changes or variant readings in the Bible as pluses, minuses, and changes.28 We define a plus as "a portion of a text not found in another text"; a minus as "a portion of text that is missing in comparison to another text";29 and changes as differences that neither shorten nor lengthen the text but that present variant readings. Most variant readings were unintentional or accidental but some were intentional or deliberate, produced by scribes who desired to explain portions of the text or alter the texts according to their theological concerns. William Hugh Brownlee has summarized the causes of variant readings:

There are numerous examples of the interchange of letters which are similar in appearance or in sound: the former are errors of the eye; the latter, errors of the ear. These errors in a manuscript might be cumulative from a series of copyists. On the other hand, both kinds of error might occur all in the same process. Thus a scribe in copying a manuscript directly by himself might misread certain words because of their similar appearance. If he read as much as a whole sentence to himself before transcribing it, it would be possible for him to make a few mistakes of "hearing," due to his habit of thinking orally rather than visually. Similarly, if a manuscript were being read aloud by a reader in a scriptorium, with scribes gathered about a table, each of them copying by the ear, errors of seeing and of hearing could both be made. The reader might sometimes misread; and the scribes might not always understand the words, especially if the reader did not enunciate clearly. . . .

There were also mechanical errors of inverting the order of letters (metathesis); of copying letters or words twice (errors of dittography); of transcribing letters or words only once which should occur twice (haplography); of omitting one of two phrases which began similarly (homoioarchton) or ended similarly (homoioteleuton), the eye accidentally skipping from the first occurrence of the initial or final word to its second occurrence.30

"Errors of the ear" are common in the text and may arise when the text is dictated to a scribe, or when the text is heard and not seen. An example of such an error is the expression you can see four miles, which may be heard as you can see for miles. A common Hebrew error that falls in this category is the particle lo (wl) or lo (al), two homonyms that are translated as "to him" or "no, not."

"Errors of the eye" may be the result of a scribe attempting to read the handwriting of an earlier scribe, whose bookhand is often illegible or who used an archaic script. Such errors include the confusion of letters that look similar. In the English, such letters include m and n, b and d, o and c, u and v, v and w, or v and y. Similar looking letters in the Hebrew alphabet include d and r, h and j, w and y, or j and t. Another scribal error results from the incorrect division of letters and words. For example, the letters Godisnowhere, designed to be read "God is now here," may be misread as "God is nowhere."

Many errors originate from the copyist’s carelessness or human fallibility. A scribe may be tired, incompetent, physically or emotionally ill, or his eyes may inadvertently skip or duplicate a single word or an entire line of text.

Examples of Errors

A striking example of a lost passage of scripture has been discovered in the DSS texts of Samuel. The new passage, which belongs in 1 Samuel 11:1,31 presents some forty-nine Hebrew words that are missing in the Hebrew Bible as well as the other ancient textual witnesses.32 With the restoration of this passage, there is a better transition from the final verse in chapter 10 to the first verse in chapter 11, and the context for the story of King Nahash is now in place:

And Nahash, king of the children of Ammon, oppressed harshly the Gadites and the Reubenites. He would gouge out the right eye of each of them and would not grant Israel a deliverer. No one was left of the Israelites across the Jordan whose right eye Nahash, king of the Ammonites, had not gouged out. But there were seven thousand men who had fled from the Ammonites and had entered Jabesh-gilead. (1 Samuel 11:1)33

Chapter 1 of the DSS Samuel texts (4QSama)34 features a number of variant readings. I will list six examples:

When she had weaned him, she took him up with her,
along with three bulls (MT)
along with a three year old bull (DSS Samuel, LXX)

There is not sufficient room in this paper to discuss the import of these variant readings. They are set forth for the purpose of demonstrating the types of variations that exist in ancient copies of the Bible.

Theological Changes

Scholars have produced evidence that textual changes were made based on a specific theological stance or agenda held by scribes or others who have had control of various biblical texts at one point or another in history. P. Kyle McCarter’s Textual Criticism: Recovering the Text of the Hebrew Bible discusses a number of theological changes, including euphemistic insertions, euphemistic substitutions, harmonizing substitutions, and suppressed readings.35 For a thorough examination of theological variant readings in the New Testament, see Ehrman’s The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, cited above. Emanuel Tov’s Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible lists several examples of variant readings that relate to God’s appearance to humans:36

"I shall never see the Lord" (Isaiah 38:11) (MT)

"I shall never see the salvation of God" (LXX)

"the Lord met him" (Exodus 4:24) (MT)

"the angel of the Lord met him" (LXX)

"and Moses went up to God" (Exodus 19:3) (MT)

"and Moses went up to the mountain of God" (LXX)

"and they saw the God of Israel" (Exodus 24:10) (MT)

"and they saw the place where the God of Israel stood" (LXX)

"and he beholds the likeness of the LORD" (Num. 12:8) (MT)

"and he beholds the glory of the LORD" (LXX)

In every instance above, the LXX presents a different picture than the MT. The words of the MT indicate that humans can access and even see God, while the text of the LXX never directly states the notion that humans are able to behold God. Tov points out "anti-polytheistic alterations"37 that have taken place at some point in the transmission of the Bible. Although the examples given above are not drawn from the DSS library, they illustrate the types of variations that may be found in the ancient textual witnesses.

Introduction | Section 1 | Section 2 | Section 3 |
Chapter Notes

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