From Israel to Salt Lake City: Inside the journey of the Dead Sea Scrolls

Doc Holiday and Brahmabull: Can you really state emphatically that if an angel came down and stood before you and told you that the Book of Mormon is true, would you believe? Before you answer take the words of angels to the older brothers of Nephi who stood before angels, heard the voice of the Lord and still fell away. The odds are against you. Nothing will prove these things untrue but your own unbelief. Even in prayer you may fail to receive the answer millions have received because of your own unbelief. You block the word of the Lord from coming unto you to speak the truth unto your minds and your hearts. Until you come to the Lord like a child, you will not receive an answer to the truthfulness of the Gospel. If you think your own knowledge surpasses the Lord's chosen vessels (prophets) then you should really sit down and listen to their words. They will tell if you don't believe to believe in their words.

No you must repent first and have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ before you can receive the answer you feel you deserve.

2 Bits: "Obviously, something has changed over time".

Here's the explanation from the Book of Mormon, which I have also wondered about:

24 And the angel of the Lord said unto me: Thou hast beheld that the book proceeded forth from the mouth of a Jew; and when it proceeded forth from the mouth of a Jew it contained the fulness of the gospel of the Lord, of whom the twelve apostles bear record; and they bear record according to the truth which is in the Lamb of God.
25 Wherefore, these things go forth from the Jews in purity unto the Gentiles, according to the truth which is in God.
26 And after they go forth by the hand of the twelve apostles of the Lamb, from the Jews unto the Gentiles, thou seest the formation of that great and abominable church, which is most abominable above all other churches; for behold, they have taken away from the gospel of the Lamb many parts which are plain and most precious; and also many covenants of the Lord have they taken away. 1 Nephi 13:24-26

See 1 Nephi 14:23, also.

And 2/3 of the world do not call themselves "Christians." My Opinion: The real proof of truth is in applying it with an open heart and mind, and confirmation of the Spirit. In Japan, most Buddhists could care less what Christian scripture says, but they sure know it's verity when they read and apply and pray about it. Would love to have been that shepherd though, who first got a look at those ancient records, how cool a surprise was that! Makes one wonder what other ancient records might be around us, how close we may be to them without any idea.

BleedCougarBlue

I can answer you. I know where you think you were going with that. Only problem is... actual plates that were engraved on are still around to be examined. They weren't repossessed by an angel so that nobody can examine them and confirm or deny their authenticity. Nobody has denied that ancient people engraved on metal plates... Only that those plates would need to be examined to confirm... An angel taking them away to erase all evidence is not a plausible explanation as to why we can't do that in the 'golden plates' case. I think you know where I'm going with that... See ya.

For BrahmaBull:

While reading online about the Dead Sea Scrolls I came across this interesting tidbit:

"The (Dead Sea Scroll) texts are written in Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, and Nabataean, mostly on parchment but with some written on papyrus and bronze."

Did you catch that?

Bronze.

Scriptural texts written on sheets of metal.

Yes, you know where I'm going with that.

See ya....

The BOM? Are you kidding? First make it agree with the History of the Americas.

Dead Sea Scrolls: Cool! I'd love to see them in person but I'm out of state.

Article quote: "Paul and Shor lauded the instrumental role BYU has played in the translation, digitization, indexing and advancement of the understanding of the meaning of the scrolls."

I think it is very interesting that the relationship of the Jews and the LDS church keep coming closer and closer together.

Honest question: Why do Deseret News moderators post blatantly snarky, anti-LDS posts like those made by 'BrahmaBull'?

RE: MHughes. The Isaiah scrolls found at Qumran closed that gap to within 500 years of the original manuscript. Interestingly, when scholars compared the MT of Isaiah to the Isaiah scroll of Qumran, the correspondence was astounding. The texts from Qumran proved to be word-for-word identical to our standard Hebrew Bible in more than 95 percent of the text. The 5 percent of variation consisted primarily of obvious slips of the pen and spelling alterations (Archer, 1974, p. 25).

The JST(Inspired Version) makes hundreds of changes to Isaiah, E.g..the book “(BoM)shall be delivered unto a man(JS).verse 16 by the power of Christ, verse 17,..the three witnesses.”

The LXX and the great Isaiah Scroll do not support Isaiah 29:14 JST, Or the rest of JST changes“

2 bits

so angels only repossess original copies of scriptural documents? gotcha, makes sense.

Brahmabull,
The Dead Sea Scrolls are not the SOURCE of the Bible. They are one group's COPY (the Essenes). So your snarky question SHOULD be... "Why weren't all COPIES of the Book of Mormon removed by an angel"?

These scrolls are not the canonical source of today's Bible. They are the Essene's copy.

These scrolls and Bible are not the exact same thing. Parts are the same, parts are different. Some books that ARE in our modern Bible were not in the scrolls. And the writings of some prophets that ARE in the scrolls are not found in our modern Bible.

While I believe the Bible completely and use it to guide my life... I can't see how one can make the case that it contains EVERYTHING that was ever part of the ancient text. IF these ancient scrolls are one ancient copy of the same book... obviously something has changed over time.

With the literally hundreds of times, and numerous different people and cultures that have made their versions and edits (these scrolls being one of them)... the one we have today can't have every word that was ever in every ancient version.

Ernest T. Bass - The DSS do not prove either the Book of Mormon or the Bible to be true. I personally believe both are true as far as they are translated correctly but I don't think it serves the LDS community to believe in faith promoting rumors such as the idea that somehow the DSS prove the validity of the Book of Mormon (BOM) or the Bible.

Also, the idea that because the Isaiah scroll among the DSS does not include the extra Isaiah material found in the BOM proves that Joseph Smith is a fraud is equally untenable. That assertion rests on a whole lot of potentially fallacious assumptions. One of which is that the version of Isaiah found with the DSS is pure and pristine - unchanged from the time of Isaiah - which is demonstrably false.

Another possibly erroneous assumption is that Joseph Smith's translation of the Book of Mormon restored original Isaiah material which may not be true. It may be that the added Isaiah material found in the BOM was added, through inspiration during the translation process, to clarify the original meaning. LDS believe prophets have the authority to do this.

One can see the Scrolls on the web, translated into English. When these scrolls were written, they did not know about this continent. They did not know the source of the Nile. They did not know about planets, our galaxy, the billions of other galaxies. They did not know of molecules or atoms. They did not know how any of our body parts work. They did not know of viruses or bacteria. Leprocy was an affliction of the unclean (we know it is of bacterial origin).

Jesus Loves U

I think we all already know that it doesn't

I think it will be interesting to note that the Isaiah scroll is 98% in tact, and when Joseph Smith created the Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible, especially from Isaiah 29: 10-18, he added the Book of Mormon and himself into it. I'm interested to see if the true writing of Isaiah has Joseph Smith in it?

Don't these scrolls prove the Bible to be mostly true and the Book of Mormon to be entirely true?

Why weren't the dead sea scrolls taken by an angel after they were translated?

Samhill, the scrolls were found in the 1940s before conservation techniques even existed for this type of artifact. Read the article again. They had to develop the conservation techniques for these scrolls as they went along. We are lucky they even survived. Your criticism is unfounded.

Really cool, too bad they are only shown in the museum of the wealthy!

"The first scholars attached them to glass with cellophane tape..."
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Ya'know, it's hard for me to think anyone who would do something so dumb could also, legitimately, be considered very scholarly.

This is awesome... I can't wait to see it myself.