The Dead Sea Scrolls Prove the Bible Is True

One reader of the Scriptures wrote about the Bible: "The stories DO contradict each other. Ever heard of the Dead Sea Scrolls? But the church heavily edited everything to get their point of view across, and took out the contradictions then."

How did the church "heavily edit" the Old Testament when we have copies that predate the church by hundreds of years but are word for word the same as our Old Testament? To disprove the Bible you refer to one of the greatest supports of the Biblical text in 2000 years. It’s almost funny.

I own a copy of all the translated scrolls from near the Dead Sea. I have read them. I have looked at copies of the originals. I plan on going to Chicago to see them when they tour the U.S. I know all about the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Dead Sea Scrolls do not contradict the Bible.

Unfortunately, this reader has been fed some lies somewhere along the line. Her argument is a 110 year old argument, first originated by German "scholars" (or supposed scholars) at the end of the 19th century. The Old Testament contains over 300 prophecies about a coming Messiah. They tell who his parents would be, the time he would be born, where he would be born, what his names would be, what he would say and do, how he would die and rise again. Jesus fulfilled all these prophecies. Skeptics need a reason not to believe this. So they invented "textual criticism."

According to the Bible, the Old Testament was written between 1500 and 400 years before Jesus was born. Therefore, it is a great cause for faith when over 300 prophecies written between 1500 and 400 hundred years before Jesus was born were fulfilled by him. So the skeptics said, how do we know that the copies of the Old Testament we have are actually what Old Testament authors wrote? The skeptics insisted that the early Christians, right after the time of Jesus, altered the Old Testament texts to make it appear as if Jesus’ life was prophesied in the Old Testament. They said the Old Testament had been altered.

Their teaching is what turned Germany from faith to skepticism, and led to the secular society of Germany that embraced two World Wars and the Nazi regime. The Nazi party was built on Darwinism and Secularism. They taught that the Aryan race was more evolved and superior to the Polish, Africans and Jews. It led to the wholesale slaughter of millions of people because Jews were "inferior species." But I digress.

In 1947 when the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered, it blew a hole in the skeptic’s argument. The Dead Sea Scrolls contained all of the Old Testament books except Esther. Esther had no prophecy about the coming Messiah, so the hundreds of prophecies about Jesus are all still there. The Dead Seas Scrolls were buried somewhere around 100 to 200 years before Jesus was born.

The oldest copies of the Old Testament we have were copied some 900 years after Jesus was born. These two copies were separated by over a 1000 years, yet they are word for word the same. They do not present doctrinal or historical facts differently. The only differences were in an obvious clerical mistake such as a letter missing from a word or a misspelling. That is amazing. We have no reason to doubt the authenticity of these copies. They were painstakingly copied by Jewish & Christian scribes.

Now, how did the church "heavily edit" the Old Testament when we have copies that predate the church by hundreds of years but are word for word the same as our Old Testament? The Dead Sea Scrolls prove the Bible!

But don't just take my word for it. Go here to read more

http://www.apologeticspress.org/modules.php?name=Read&cat=1&itemid=266

http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/bibleorg.html

http://www.bibleprobe.org/compare.html

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