Stop 2. The ground breaks open: the Dead Sea Scrolls

Before 1947, the oldest Hebrew copies of the Old Testament were about a thousand years younger than Jesus. Then scrolls were found in caves near the Dead Sea, and more turned up over the next nine years.

Those scrolls pushed our oldest Hebrew copies back by more than a thousand years. The good news came first. The Great Isaiah Scroll, from about 125 BC, agrees closely with the standard Hebrew text. The scribes copied with great care.

Then came the surprise. The scrolls show that the Hebrew text was already being copied in more than one form. In a few places, they agree with the old Greek Bible against the standard Hebrew text.

Isaiah 53:11 is one place. Deuteronomy 32:8 is another. The standard Hebrew says the nations were divided by the number of the “sons of Israel.” The scrolls say “sons of God.” The Greek says “angels of God.” Both point to heavenly beings. Four modern Bibles, the ESV, the NET, the NLT and the NRSV, follow the older wording. The KJV (King James Version) follows the standard text.

In 2025, a team of scientists dated many of the scrolls again. They used carbon dating, which is a way to measure how old something is, and a computer program that studies handwriting. They found that many scrolls are older than people thought.

What the scrolls do not do is show that the Bible was lost or changed. A few places where copies differ is what you would expect after two thousand years of copying by hand. The surprise would be if there were none. And the scrolls give us something priceless: older witnesses to compare.

On the tree, this is box 2.