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Revisionist Scholars
Alter Bible Texts

NEIL ALTMAN

Special to The _Jewish News

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I

n the near future, buying a
Bible as a wedding or confir-
mation gift or for one's own
personal study may involve
more than choosing which version or
edition is the best translation of the
original Hebrew and Greek.
If some scholars in the field of
biblical criticism have their way, the
best-selling book of all time may
undergo some radical changes and
additions. Revisionists are also toying
with the idea of adding the Temple
Scroll, one of the Dead Sea Scrolls,
to the Old Testament.
German scholar Hartmet
Stegemann, along with others, regards
the Temple Scroll as the sixth book of
Moses. However, this proposed addi-
tion to the Pentateuch — the five
books of Moses — does not contain,
as Stegemann admits, such subjects
basic to the Judaism of the period.
Hershel Shanks, in Understanding
the Dead Sea Scrolls, tells us that the
Temple Scroll "contains many_ other
laws as well as descriptions of reli-
gious festivals not mentioned in the
Bible or elsewhere."
Shanks also writes, "The scroll
contains detailed plans for the build-
ing of the Lord's 'temple, hence its
name, the Temple Scroll."
But how can this scroll speak of
the elaborate plans for the construc-
tion of the Temple, when at the time
of the scroll's writing — supposedly
from 300 BCE to 50 CE — the
Temple was still standing?
Such anomalies raise serious ques-
tions about the dating and purported
Jewish authorship of the Temple
Scroll. Yet those who endorse the
authenticity of the Temple Scroll and
apocryphal texts found among the
Dead Sea Scrolls could bring
unprecedented changes to the canon
of scripture, 66 books of the Bible,
traditionally held to have been
divinely inspired.
In his 1966 book Secrets of the
Dead Sea Scrolls, Randall Price
writes, "the scrolls ... imply that the
list of books which were accepted as
part of the Bible at Qumran appar-
ently differed from .. the official
canon of the Hebrew bible ... It is
also 'possible that such works as the
Temple Scroll were ... canonical."

Neil Altman is a Philadelphia-based
writer who specializes in the Dead Sea
Scrolls.

10/9

1998

46 Detroit Jewish News

The ancient Jewish and Christian
position, however, is that the Old
Testament canon was completed by
400 BCE, long before the existence
of the Dead Sea. Scrolls.
At stake in all of this is the credi-
bility of the Bible. There is today a
concerted effort to alter the Holy
Scriptures. Yet there is a consistency
with which the Bible has been hand-
ed down to each generation that has
established its validity.
Judaism has always regarded the
Torah as inviolable. Torah making
was not just a scribal art but a sacred
profession. The word "scribe" in
Hebrew means counter, for he had to
count how many words and letters
there were to the center point of the
five - books of Moses and from there
to the end, to ensure no errors. He
had to follow precise rituals such as
declaring that he was writing the
Torah "in the name of its sanctity."
If the scribe made an error in
writing the name of God, he had to
put that parchment away and start
anew. And no word could be written
from memory. There were many
other checks that were used in copy-
ing the Old Testament books to
insure preservation of the sacred
words of God.
First-century historian Josephus
wrote, "We have given practical
proof of our reverence for our scrip-
tures. For although such long ages
have now passed, no one has ven-
tured to add or to remove or to alter
a syllable; - and it is an instinct with
every Jew, from the day of his birth,
to regard them as decrees of God to
abide by them and, if need be, cheer-
fully to die for them."
One can go anywhere in the world
today and find the exact same biblical
texts among all Jewish communities.
The writers of the New Testament
also were Jews. Paul, in Romans 3:1-
2, wrote the following, "What
advantage then hath the Jew? ...
Much every way: chiefly because that
unto them were committed the ora-
cles of God."
To understand the great effort
throughout history to preserve the
original texts of the Old and New
Testaments, we have only to read what
gentile translators of the King James
version of the Bible wrote to the
English monarch in 1611. They note
that it was the great labor "out of the
original Sacred Tongues ... (that) there
should be one more exact Translation
of the Holy Scriptures into the
English tongue ..."

