Mark Ward
Not long ago, the Dead Sea Scrolls were locked away in places where only a select few scholars could see them. That situation actually lasted for decades.
The deep end
Now, you can see the scrolls for yourself with all the helps you’re accustomed to in Logos Bible Software. Right-click on any word, and the definition and parsing information comes up immediately. All kinds of search and look-up tools do as well. You can even have Logos pronounce the word for you.
For most Bible students, this is diving into the deep end. You’ve been through the kiddie pool; you want the swimmable waters in the middle, where you can still reach the ground with your toes.
Andy Perrin teaches about the Dead Sea Scrolls
One of the best way to do this, to get an in-depth look at the world of the Dead Sea Scrolls, is with the Logos Mobile Ed course by Dr. Andrew Perrin, AR305 The Dead Sea Scrolls. This is a 12-hour course in which you’ll learn about the discovery of the scrolls, the controversies surrounding their ownership and publication, the Qumran community, and—as the scrolls themselves no doubt say somewhere—“much more.”
In this course, Dr. Perrin provides historical background to help you understand how the beliefs and practices of the group that wrote and preserved the Dead Sea Scrolls compares to those of other Jewish groups from the time of Jesus. You’ll see what insight the Scrolls can provide on the accuracy of the text of the Old Testament, the prevalence of other ancient Jewish writings, and the Second Temple context of early Christianity.
English translations of the Dead Sea Scrolls
In this issue of Bible Study Magazine is a side-by-side comparison, with differences marked, between the Hebrew Bible as it came down to us through the centuries and the Great Isaiah Scroll found in Qumran cave 1. There was just barely enough space to cover the key passage, Isaiah 52:13 to 55:13. Of course, however, the entirety of the Dead Sea Scrolls have been translated into English—more than once, in fact. And Logos is a great place to compare the scrolls (again: in English) to the major English Bibles of today.
Famous twentieth-century scholar Geza Vermes has a translation of the scrolls available in Logos (The Dead Sea Scrolls in English). And Marty Abegg, featured in the cover story for this issue, has collaborated with other scholars to produce A New Translation of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
It’s a simple matter to use the Text Comparison Tool in Logos to compare, say, the New International Version, Abegg’s translation of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the Lexham English Septuagint. This would give you access to three related but distinct traditions of text and translation. To go any further, you’d need to learn Hebrew and Greek (which Logos can also help you do!). But it is often part of good Bible study to do a quick check of the history of interpretation on any given passage, and tools such as these are important witnesses to that history.
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This article was originally published in the January/February 2022 issue of Bible Study Magazine. Slight adjustments, such as title and subheadings, may be the addition of an editor.
Related articles
- The Dead Sea Scrolls: 9 Common Questions, Answered
- What the Dead Sea Scrolls Reveal about the Bible’s Reliability
- 3 Ways the Dead Sea Scrolls Revolutionized NT Studies
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