The Sean McDowell Show - Did Wes Huff Exaggerate the Great Isaiah Scroll? This Scholar Might Surprise You.

Episode Date: March 14, 2025

What is the 1QIsaa scroll? Why it is so popular, and did Wes Huff represent it accurately on the Joe Rogan podcast? Is it's transmission "miraculous"? Today, I have Dr. Anthony Ferguson, a Dead Sea Scrolls scholar who specializes in textual variants in the Great Isaiah Scroll. We aim to bring some clarity on this debate, and yet, his responses might surprise you. Enjoy!WATCH: Reacting to Wesley Huff on Joe Rogan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MC-qf90_iQ4&t=206sREAD: The Dead Sea Scrolls: A Short History, by Weston Fields (https://amzn.to/40Q2Ddu)*Get a MASTERS IN APOLOGETICS or SCIENCE AND RELIGION at BIOLA (https://bit.ly/3LdNqKf)*USE Discount Code [SMDCERTDISC] for 25% off the BIOLA APOLOGETICS CERTIFICATE program (https://bit.ly/3AzfPFM)*See our fully online UNDERGRAD DEGREE in Bible, Theology, and Apologetics: (https://bit.ly/448STKK)FOLLOW ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA: Twitter: https://twitter.com/Sean_McDowell TikTok: @sean_mcdowell Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmcdowell/Website: https://seanmcdowell.org

How close is the manuscript 1Q Isaiah A from the Dead Sea Scrolls to our current copies of the Bible? Did Wes Huff overstate its accuracy, making it seem miraculous, so to speak, on the Joe Rogan experience? How similar is it to the book of Isaiah that's in the Bible? One of the things that shocked them about Isaiah was that it was word for word identical to the Masoretic text. Today we have pastor and professor Dr. Anthony Ferguson, who has written his dissertation in this field and continues to publish in this particular field. Dr. Ferguson, it's great to have you back on the show talking about the Dead Sea Scrolls yet again. And this unique manuscript has been all the talk for a couple of weeks. So the moment we connected, I thought this would be amazing if you could give us

some insight from your own experience. So thanks for being willing to come on. Yeah, I'm happy to be here and talk to you about 1QISAA, Sean. Before we jump in, maybe just give our audience a background in your specific work and training as it relates kind of the Dead Sea Scrolls as a whole and even to this particular manuscript.

They have a PhD from Southern Seminary in Biblical Studies. My supervisor was Russell Fuller, and Peter Gentry was on my team. My external reader was Emmanuel Tove. And I analyzed 55 manuscripts that Emmanuel Tove classifies as textually non-aligned. And in the dissertation, I compared them to Codex Leningrad, which is what we call the Masoretic text. And I compared them on a quantitative level, as well as a qualitative level.

So quantitatively, how many differences are there between the non-aligned text and the Masoretic text? And then what's the nature of these differences? So that was my PhD dissertation. It was a joy to write. And since then, I've had the ability to participate in Evangelical Textual Criticism Blogspot as well as the Texan Canon Institute hosted at Phoenix Seminary, published in many confessional journals as well as JBL.

And I'm working slowly on trying to publish my dissertation. It isn't easy with a family and pastoring a church and teaching at schools, but hopefully I'll get there maybe in the next decade. Well, we both went to Southern, obviously studied very different lanes of interest and expertise, but it's pretty amazing how much your study lines up with where some of these nuanced particular discussions have been recently. Just tell us really quickly, why did you choose this particular area? I studied the death of the apostles and there's a story behind that.

Why did you choose this area? Yeah, well, I think probably with many students at Southern, it was because of Peter Gentry. So I took many, many classes with him in the MDiv level and in the PhD level. And it was during a Septuagint seminar that I was introduced to this idea. I entered into the PhD wanting to be a pastor and thinking I was going to study biblical theology. And I had little understanding of the Dead Sea Scrolls until the Septuagint seminar, and I was introduced to concepts

that were very, very challenging. And I loved Hebrew, I loved Greek, I loved the languages. I love getting to the bottom of things, looking at manuscripts. So it just really aligned really, really closely. And when I understood some of the arguments that are being made from the evidence from the Dead Sea, it was a topic I really wanted to get to the bottom of. I love it. That makes total sense. Now, one more question before we jump in.

I'm just curious, as a scholar, when you see this minutiae of this particular manuscript of Isaiah being discussed on the largest podcast in the world. Are you like, yes, this is awesome. I've studied this. Are you like, oh boy, this never ends well? Like, what is your instinct and your kind of broad take before we get into the weeds, so to speak? Well, honestly, Shana, it makes me really excited. I mean, I get to talk to you again, right? Were you going to hang out. My wife told me the other day, she's like, Anthony, you're living your best life right now. Because on the one hand, you know,

my favorite soccer team is Everton and they have two wins in a row. And we get to talk to the public about the Dead Sea Scrolls. Of course, I mean, a lot of the conversation that's circulating right now, not all of it to be sure, and we'll talk about this in our conversation, but is based on your perspective, right? So you have different scholars analyzing one QI's AA from different perspectives. So I mean, minutia, that is a valid way of describing the argument, but also like I'm

a textual critic. That's what I do. I look at manuscripts and we look at minutiae, right? Like we look at, you know, the angular head of a letter. Is it rounded or is it more of a square? I mean, we like looking at the details because details are important. So, I mean, the ability to talk to you about this topic,

the ability to try to inform the public. I mean, these are things that I'm pretty excited about. I love it. And I'm not a textual critic. So I just love that you and others like you exist. So I can benefit from the time and analysis you put in. So let's get into some of this analysis, but it might be helpful.

Some of our audience is really familiar with some of these details. You mentioned like the Leningrad, you know, codex, manuscript, etc. Tell us what's meant by the Masoretic Text, maybe kind of the Septuagint, the Dead Sea Scrolls. What are some of the different scrolls that weigh into this compared to our modern text? Give us like a quick 101 to understand before again we dive into the minutiae. Yeah, good. So what you just described are what we would call the sources.

So the Masoretic Text is comprised of two components. On the one hand, it has these certain paratextual features such as letters written above the line and certain scribal marks that we call like inverted noons that are paratextual markers that help us understand the text of the Masoretic text. These are very, very ancient. So you have those ancient marks on the one hand, but on the other hand, you have these medieval markings that involve like vows. So the Dead Sea Scrolls don't have the same vows that the Masoretic text has. The vows in the Dead Sea Scroll are

consonants that function as vows. But in the 6th to 9th century AD, Masoretes added certain vows, mostly to the bottom of the word, but also sometimes to the top of the word to indicate the vowels. So these are involved in the Masoretic text, as well as the accents. These are cantillation markers, and they also function a bit like commas and periods and colons. So the punctuation, the Masoretic text has added these vowels and the punctuation,

as well as marginal notes that scholars would call massora. These massoras are added to the Masoretic text. So that's what we're talking about. We're talking about an ancient, continental text with these ancient markings and then these medieval markings and all together that's the Masoretic text. Our best copy of the Masoretic text is Codex Leningrad. If you were to pull up a copy of the Hebrew Bible, that's what it would be based on. The Septuagint is a very, very important source in Old Testament textual criticism. It began to be translated around the middle of the third century BC and was most likely completed

before the turn of the era. So before the advent of Christianity, to be sure. And, you know, the Septuagint, the term can be really controversial, but basically, what we mean by Septuagint is basically the Greek Old Testament scriptures. Most scholars, that's what they use when they're referring to it. If I use it in this conversation, that's what I'll be referring to. The Old Testament translated into Greek. Now the Dead Sea Scrolls is a popular term

that refers to about a thousand manuscripts discovered in the Judean desert. So of course, the most popular site that Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered was none other than Qumran. But Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered at other sites as well like Masada, the mighty fortress Masada, Nahal Hever, Nahal Merba'at, Wadi Sadin, many places.

And collectively, these thousand manuscripts, about a quarter of which are biblical, are what we call the Dead Sea Scrolls. So it's important that we understand that not all Dead Sea Scrolls are from Qumran, but every text we found near Qumran is a Dead Sea Scroll. Okay, that makes sense. I've actually been to Qumran and kind of walked up the hill into the cave, cave one where 1Q Isaiah A was found, is pretty cool moment. But if, tell me if this is too simplistic.

So we have basically roughly a thousand year gap between probably when say 1Q Isaiah A was written and kind of the modern copies that we have rooted in the Masoretic texts. And so it's been copied for 1,000 years. And the question is, how carefully has this been copied? And Wes Huff said, word for word, on the Joe Rogan experience.

And then some scholars have stepped in and said, OK, wait a minute. Is this just popularizing and overstating something? Or is this really accurate and true? And then he's created all this debate about the particulars of copying that we're weighing in today. Is that a fair synopsis as you see it, or would you correct or qualify anything there? It sounded pretty good, Sean. I think the only

qualification or correction I would make is that West Huff's argument was that Isaiah has been copied carefully. So when he mentioned 1Q Isaiah, I mean, certainly the fact that 1Q Isaiah A demonstrates the antiquity of the Masoret text, I think is, that's a great takeaway. But you can't jump from that and say our entire Old Testament has been copied carefully on the basis of 1Q Isaiah A, right? Like you have to have more data and more evidence

Than that so I think what you said is perfectly right, but I think West's point was simply that we could show that Isaiah has been careful has been carefully copied when we Compare one Q Isaiah a to the Masoretic text Okay, so maybe tell us a little bit more about 1q Isaiah and why it's so popular. Yeah, there are several reasons why it's popular. I mean on the one hand, it's a copy of Isaiah, right? So I mean Isaiah is super popular. In church history, people call this like the fifth gospel. It's when you look at the New Testament, Isaiah is quoted, are alluded to often. And in the Dead Sea, I believe that the statistics is 22 copies of the Book of Isaiah have been discovered.

Six commentaries and several different non-biblical works that are alluding to Isaiah. So Isaiah is popular today. I mean, if any pastor is gonna preach a prophet, it's going to be the Book of Isaiah, I think, right? At least Isaiah 7 popular today. I mean, if any pastor is gonna preach a prophet, it's going to be the book of Isaiah, I think, right? At least Isaiah 7, 14, Isaiah 9, Isaiah 11, right? Isaiah is popular because, you know, I mean, I think in a really clear way,

it speaks to hope in a coming Messiah. So Isaiah was popular because of that reason. Now Isaiah was popular because of that reason to the Essenes. So it's popular to us because it's just Isaiah. I mean, connected to this point, it's popular because it's biblical. And imagine most of our audience here today have never heard of the Aramaic documents from Elephantine discovered on the Nile River in Egypt. These are Jewish Aramaic documents, but they're not popular

because we found no Bible there, right? So I mean, non-biblical texts, documents, marriage contracts, the transaction of goods, like ancient documents that depict these things are ordinary, right? They're not extraordinary. So I think 1Q Isaiah A is popular because it's Isaiah, and it's ordinary, right? They're not extraordinary. So I think 1Q Isaiah A is popular because it's Isaiah and it's biblical, right? It's also popular because it's nearly

intact. If we were to put all of the biblical Dead Sea Scrolls together, 1Q Isaiah A would comprise a quarter of this text. So it's a huge amount of biblical text. It would be inaccurate to say it's entirely complete. There are a few lacuna scattered throughout the text. But by and large, Sean, I mean, you have an entire biblical text. You have the beginning, and you could look online and you could see the stitching holes to the right of the first column, which indicates a handle sheet. A handle sheet, so here's a book by Donald Perry, a great book on 1QIsAA.

This cover is meant to protect the important stuff, which is the text inside. 1QIsAA had a handle sheet, you could see that. But then it's also been preserved at the ending. It's so interesting, Sean, but in some manuscripts there are things called colophons. Colophons are like this writing at the very end that tell you the scribe who wrote it.

They tell you what books they copied from. They might tell you certain aspects about the text. Where was the middle letter, the end of the letter, how many letters and so on. Well, you're praying that there's a colophon in 1Q Isaiah, and there's not. But there are three letters in Olif, a Mim, and a Reish, which is like the Hebrew word for word, or the verb to speak, Amar. And it's there. And so, I mean, 1Q Isaiah is popular because it's so intriguing, right? Like, here we have the entire text from beginning to end.

You see all the scribal markers, these little X that have, you know, these cryptic Hebrew letters, uh, and you have it all there. So, like, in other texts, when we have, when scholars have to reconstruct because they're fragmentary, very little reconstruction has to happen when QI is AA, because it's fair, right?

I mean, it's also popular because it was one of the first texts that were discovered. I mean, when the first news articles dropped about discoveries of ancient texts, and I think it was probably like 1948. I can't remember the publication that first did it. It's like Isaiah has been discovered, right? I mean, but other things were discovered as well. There was like a text they call the war scroll,

Genesis Apocryphon, there were commentary to Habakkuk, 1QS, the handbook to the community there, and 1Q Isaiah B was also discovered as well. But 1Q Isaiah A, I think, stole the headlines. So just its timing. You know, it was also a really turbulent time when these texts were discovered that makes the history of the Dead Sea Scrolls super intriguing. You can read in Weston Field's full history of the Dead Sea Scrolls or in his concise version, like the history of the discovery and what happened. And it's amazing, Sean. I mean, like the Dead Sea Scrolls became contraband.

They were smuggled to America. And then, you know, yeah, Craig Evans says that, you know, they're in the back of his, his, his Dr. Vodder's like trunk as he went around talking to people about this. Yeah, they it's a really interesting history. And so I think that also has captured our imagination. And I would say finally, two final points, you know, it's popular because on the one hand, it does,

it is, it does align very closely with the Masoretic text. I mean, you hear the debate about 93 and 96, 98. I mean, however you slice the pie, that's pretty good, right? And you know, Wes Huff did say the initial scholars were shocked. And that's a very true statement. I mean, you can look at Edward Kuchar's book.

This book is a monumental book in the Dead Sea Scrolls. And on page two, I believe, he says, the consensus, the most remarkable aspect of one Q is a a to those who initially discovered it was its alignment to the Masoretic text Every scholar and that might be an overstatement Scholars immediately recognized this so when Wes Huff says, you know, I mean scholars were shocked and he's exactly right I mean they they weren't shocked that it was word-for-word identical But they were shocked about how closely it aligned to NT. I mean, the context of 1950, I mean, there's a context of how scholars have understood the history of the Old Testament texts. And I mean, there's been many

times in history where scholars are wanting different texts. I mean, as Christians, we want similar texts, but as textual critics, we want different texts. Because we want to be able to look at all the differences that are happening. When they saw one QI's AA, it was remarkable, but I think not to everybody's expectation, they wanted differences and one QI's AA really just didn't give it to them. So on the one hand, it's popular

because it does show a lot of unity. But on the other hand, it shows a level of diversity that we shouldn't downplay. And perhaps the statement word for word does downplay that diversity, but then we don't wanna exaggerate that diversity as well. And I think if you're going to put all those, what, six or seven reasons together, that's probably going to indicate, Sean, why 1QI is so popular.

That's amazing. I had no idea there was such a back story to why it was popular then. And then, of course, there's a story of why it's popular now. Would you be willing to go back? You don't have to do it right now, but that book that you were citing on page two with that quote, will you send me that exact quote just so we can put it up for people to see exactly what they said and kind of analyze them for themselves? I think in this conversation, specific details have become important. So we'll throw it out there for people to be able to see and analyze.

I think that'd be great. Now you were kind of hinting at this in the sense that some scholars emphasize the closeness of the Maserati text with one QI's AA, while others emphasize the differences. And I've heard from like 92.5 to like 99%. What you helped me see when we talked about this briefly is that there's kind of a backstory and assumptions and like a different mode of analysis that people bring to the text

That is going to result in these differences So help us understand why scholars seem to have conflicting categories for this very text Yeah, so It depends on what warrants point in your statistics, right? So on the one hand, if every single difference, it is important. And if you're looking at alignment to word for word, or even letter for letter, then your statistics are going to be lower. Because as has already been mentioned in the conversation and rightly so, one QI's AAA preserves a later linguistic profile.

It has a later spelling practice. It uses the consonant vov to indicate O, the vowel O or U or even what's called a vocal schwa, which is a half vowel, often in 1Q-ISA to a degree that the MT does not do. If in your statistics you're going to include letter for letter, spelling practice, or phonological differences, 1Q-ISA also loves to do this double consonant called

a vov olive. And it's very, very strange, our yod olive. So there's this conjunction called key in Hebrew. And key can mean things like for, or when, and because, and it's spelled kaaf yod. But in 1Q-ISA, it's often spelled with Yod. But in one QRIs AA, it's often spelled with an olive at the end. I mean, it just has a different spelling practice, Sean. So if in your statistics,

you're going to include all of that, then obviously the statistics are going to be much, much lower. Also, Sean, this might seem very technical, but what counts as a word? That's a very, very important point we need to make. If your common denominator in your statistics is the total words in one Q, I, Z, A, A, well, how are you counting a word?

Melik, for example, is the Hebrew word for king. But if you add a phenomenal suffix like, mal-ko or mal-ki, mal-ki would be my king, mal-ko would be his king, is mal-ko one word or two words? So if mal-ko in your statistics is just one word, well then your common denominator, like your total words in one QA is going to be much, much less.

And therefore, the amount of variance is going to be much, much less and therefore the amount of variance is going to be much, much less. I think we're seeing different statistics thrown out there because we're counting the words and the variance differently in one Q Isaiah A. Also, some people give statistics that aren't exhaustive, and that should be understood. Even in my dissertation, it wasn't an exhaustive analysis of every single difference in one

QIAA, and we can get back to that in a moment if you'd like. But some scholars, they do like the differences in one column or in a group of columns. And then what they do is they say, well, this is the statistics for this group of columns. And then, you know, in the bigger argument, it gets lost that this wasn't an exhaustive analysis of everything on the text. So I think these reasons are going to yield slightly different statistics. In my dissertation, I think I wrote it down somewhere. In my dissertation, I think I wrote it down somewhere, I analyzed 25,374 words. And what I did was I used malco as two words.

So you have melek as one word, and you have the pronomal suffix as another word. Some people might debate that. They might not quite want to do it that way. But that's what I did. So I analyzed 25,374 words, and when I only counted variants that don't result in a synonymous reading. So like if the reading between MT and 1QAA is a synonymous reading, I didn't count it as a variant.

reading, I didn't count it as a variant. And so all of the readings that yield a different meaning, whether or not that meaning was very significant or not very significant, the text aligned 96.44%. There were 903 differences that yielded a difference in meaning. So it yielded a 96.44% alignment between MT and 1Q-ISAE. But then I had this other set of statistics where if I eliminated all those differences that result from the scribal process, so a scribal error, for example, a letter sounded the same, it looked the same, a scribe's eye skipped from one line to the other line, or he interpreted the text,

he was updating the text to fit its contemporary usage, things like that. If I eliminated all of those differences, and I was only left with these differences, like, hey, I don't know how these got here. There isn't any apparent reason. I yielded 31 differences, which led to a 99.88 percent alignment between MT and 1Q-ISA. So just my statistics, I mean, people might disagree with how I did this,

but that's my methodology. And so I think you have differences in statistics for a number of reasons. What counts as a word and what counts as a variant is going to be the big things. That is so interesting. So on the lower end, it's like you've got what we would consider an A minus, almost into 93% and an A. On the higher scale, it's like 98%, 99% similarity. But the difference between what we count as a word and some of the other particulars laid out is really helpful to assess the methodology

we start with shapes the conclusion that we come to. So if you were going to describe the relationship between 1Q-ISAEA and the Masoretic text, how would you explain that relationship? One Q-ISAEA strongly suggests that it was copied from a proto-MT text. In other words, the text that One QIZ is copying from was probably, I don't want to use the word word-for-word because we can't look at it. Right? But it was very close to the MT text. I would call One Q is a a popular text.

This is not original to me. This is probably what how most scholars would describe it. If you look at my dissertation, I have a long, long footnote that talks about all of the scholars that are describing it this way. It is a popular text. Basically what it's doing, it's taking an empty text, a proto empty text,

and it's making it understandable to its modern context. It's changing the spelling, it's changing words, lexemes so that it fits modern usage. It's interpreting the text so that you aren't confused about the nature of the text. And then also, it is filled with scribal errors. So, Emmanuel Tove in his book, Scribble Practices and Approaches in the Judean Desert,

has this really big appendix at the very end on page, I believe, 338, where he marks the amount of scribal intervention. One Q Isaiah, I believe, has a scribe intervening in the text every four lines. What that probably tells you is he didn't copy super carefully. One Q Isaiah is a popular text. It's updating the language to fit second century Hebrew. It's also filled with scribal errors. And when you just apply common sense, Sean, you just apply common sense textual criticism to 1QIsAA,

in the vast majority of instances, not in every instance, but in the vast majority of instances, the Masoretic text seems to be the more original reading than 1QIAA. Okay, that's really helpful. Now I'm gonna kind of push into the relationship between the two of them a little bit more, but I'm curious when I first heard Joe Rogan respond to West Health, he's like, whoa, it's like a miracle.

And it was in the context of talking about kind of the origin of the universe was also a miracle. You never hear that thinking. I think we're using miracle in an equivocal sense. The origin of the universe is like Jesus walking on water. It is something supernatural. The copying of this, it's miraculous. Like if somebody makes a save in a volleyball game,

it's like, well, that was like a miraculous save, but we don't really mean it was supernatural, like God had to intervene. Would you use the term miraculous in kind of the second sense of like, wow, this is remarkable? Or do you just want to reserve as a textual critic in a different form than kind of somebody who's learning this like Joe Rogan, who's like, whoa, and that's just his natural, spontaneous response. What would your take on that be? Yeah, so two things come to my mind. I hope I don't lose either of them.

But the first thing is, you know, I think it shows what Rogan's expectation was. Oh, that's interesting. Like for him to be able to be like, oh, that's a miracle. And then I guess Wes Huff has reached back to Joe and clarified and he still thinks it's a miracle. I think like what that shows, Sean,

is like, you know, a person who's not an expert in the Dead Sea Scrolls, like what they're expecting. They're expecting wild stuff in the Old Testament, right? And then they're expecting it to be radically different. And here's the thing, Sean, you know, like one Q is a is not uncommon. Like when you look at the Dead Sea Scrolls, I would say it's a typical Dead Sea Scroll. Like the type of alignment you have between it and the empty. It's a pretty representative text, not for every text. There are some texts that are different and hard to make sense of.

There are some texts that are very, very close to MT. But this is a normal text, Sean. The differences that are happening in one QA, those are the differences happening in most of the text. They're scribal errors and they're small changes that are typical of what a scribe copyist did. I think the first thing I want to say, Sean, is Joe's response

demonstrates that he's expecting these things to be completely different, and that's just not the case for most of these things. Hmm That's that's a great response. Keep going. I think yeah, I think on the other hand I mean, you know like when my favorite soccer team Everton wins a game and I've already referenced them twice twice I don't probably shouldn't keep doing that, but they won this week and so I'm very happy I might say that's a miracle You know, I mean like it's you you know, it's unexpected, right?

It's alarming. It stirs something within us, something that's wonderful. And I think if you expect the text of the Old Testament to be chaos and wild and theological doctrines all over the place, and you have concluded that the Bible cannot be trusted because of the differences in the Old Testament manuscripts and then you you hear one Q Isaiah. I mean I think you're filled with wonder and rightly so. You know what I call it a miracle. I mean probably not

because I mean my expectation for a Dead Sea Scroll text. I have a certain expectation like if they were to discover brand new Dead Sea Scrolls like they did in 2021. Yeah. You know, they showed the pictures, like what happened was not exceptional. You know, you have small differences in the text and that's not, at this point, that's what a Dead Sea Scroll is. It's a text that is going to have differences, small differences, typically because of a scribal error or a desire to interpret the text. But when you take those things away, by and large in my experience,

you're going to have a text very close to the Masoretic text. Got you. Now, I want to come back to the relationship between 1Q-ISAE and the Masoretic text. This question might be moving outside of your specialty, so feel free to just say, Sean, I don't want to comment on that. You said kind of one Q.I. is somewhat representative of the Dead Sea Scrolls as a whole.

What about when we compare to other ancient literature? Is the Dead Sea Scrolls just representative of other ancient literature? Or is there a sense as far as you're aware that there is more careful copying as a whole with the Dead Sea Scrolls than other ancient texts? Yeah, Sean, so outside of, so I am not a textual critic in like,

in other areas, so I wouldn't really wanna comment. Totally. Outside of, outside of is when I'm reading, you know, textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament. You know, there might be an article on like the textual transmission of the Iliad or the Odyssey. And you know, I read that, but that's all my expertise is. So I think I would I wouldn't feel comfortable going beyond that.

No, that's great. I wouldn't expect you to that's awesome I appreciate you staying in your lane. So to speak couple more questions for you Anthony Can you give us a fuller picture of this text? Yeah, so you you know it one Q is a like its textual character how it aligns with the Masoretic text How it aligns with our Old Testament is the is the most popular issue regarding 1QIsAA. And for a right reason, right? Especially for Christians, evangelicals like myself, who believe in the trustworthiness of the Word of God

and that when the Bible says, Thus says the Lord, it's none other than God's Word. I mean, that's the most important topic in our mind. But 1QIsAA has several other really. Fascinating features to it. As I mentioned earlier, it has evidence indicating a handle sheet to the to the right, so this would be like a cover of one Q is a that protected it. It also has the very end of the manuscript is kept intact and you have this.

You know this ominous Amar left there, which is really interesting and intriguing, but also it's been on a couple of podcasts. There's actually a bisection in one QIAA. Or you might have heard scholars say like the bifurcation of one QIAA. Basically, the text seems to have been copied from two different exemplars. And so when you look at the first 33 columns, the orthography is less, it's more defective, it's more like MT. But then in the second half, it starts going crazy.

It's very, very full. Also, at the end of column 33, Sean, there are three blank lines that are left blank at the very bottom of the column. What this has done is it's caused many scholars to postulate and ask questions, like, do these differences indicate that something about the compositional history of Isaiah? You might be aware that some scholars think that Isaiah, there was three Isaias or four Isaias, multiple Isaias, and scholars like Paul Colley and others

have argued that this indicates that, but it doesn't. And the reason why I wanna say something to you is because I think in one of the more recent podcasts, there was conversation about, you know, does this prove that, you know, there were two Isaias that were brought together into what we know as Isaiah, and that's probably not the case. The bifurcation of Isaiah into two halves, I would even go as far as say doesn't. It does not indicate anything about the composition of Isaiah or the theology of Isaiah or the scribe of Isaiah,

I think it's bifurcated for very practical reasons. So if you notice, the division is entirely in half. 33 columns on one side, 33 columns on the other side. You have, I wrote down some other statistics here. And it's actually very interesting. Oh, I just, I misspoke 27 columns on one side. Okay. 27 columns on another side. 33 chapters on one side, 33 chapters on the other side. Gotcha. But even if you continue, like, you know, the manuscript is made,

the writing surface is parchment, animal skins. And it's very, very interesting. You typically have three to four columns of writing per animal sheet. And you have eight sheets on one side and nine sheets on the other. But remember that handle sheet was there too. So most likely it was 33 chapters, 33 chapters in 27 columns, in 27 columns

on eight pieces, or sorry, nine pieces of leather, nine pieces of leather. So it's divided completely in half, which makes me think, Sean, it's been bifurcated for practical reasons, not because of the composition, but for practical reasons. I've never copied a Hebrew manuscript, letter for letter, word for word,

using a read pen on parchment, but I'd imagine it's hard. So practically, maybe the scribe was getting tired. Maybe this was common practice in the ancient world to divide a big, big, big text into two scribes, two scribes copying it. Also, it's expensive. You have to kill, in my calculation,

17 animals to make one Q Isaiah. I mean, that's a big deal. Like right now, I go to the printer and I get this kind of paper, which I don't know is 50 bucks for a ream of paper. I don't know, I don't buy paper, how much it is. But I mean, you're talking 17 animals you're killing to make one Q Isaiah A.

So it's also very, very expensive to make a manuscript. So it's possible that maybe one Q Isaiah A like is the product of copying from two scrolls simply because it was very, very expensive to make a copy of Isaiah, right? So, but also, you know, it's divided completely in half, which actually causes me to wonder, maybe there was some care, even considerable care

that went into copying the text before he began copying. So, I mean, there's a lot of scribal intervention that went into copying the text before he began copying. So, I mean, there's a lot of scribal intervention in 1Q Isaiah and that is sure. But I think there was some thoughtful, there was some thought about how to lay out the text before him. So an interesting idea or an interesting fact about 1 QIs is it's divided into two. Some people have been saying it's because it comes from different Isaias. That's, I think, not the instance, the case at all.

It's been bifurcated for completely practical reasons. I think another important feature is Drew Longacre has written a really helpful article on this that your audience should definitely check out because the second half of 1QAA has about every 29 lines, it has a section that lines were left blank or every 29 lines,

29 lines plus or minus, the text becomes highly corrupt. And what Drew argues is that what's happening in these, the second half, is that the scribe is copying from a text with a damaged bottom edge. So basically when their scroll was rolled up, and it was sitting down,

it began to damage on the bottom. So what do you do? I think we like to think our modern situation is like it was back then. You look on my shelf, I have lots of copies of Isaiah. I don't think that was the case back then. So what do you do when your edge is damaged for whatever reason? So what Drew says is they did one of two things, either on the one hand, they left lines blank that would be filled in later, or the scribe did

the best he could, you know, based on the context, based on his memory, based on the letters that were still there. And so a scholar like Eugene Ulrich, he is gonna be the scholar on the farthest end of the spectrum who says there's so much diversity in one QIZA, it's a completely different text, that's your guy. He's going to allude to these passages in the second half of one QIZA as his evidence.

But the problem with his argument is that they occur on regular quote unquote intervals and also describe in some instances left blank lines that were then later filled in to align almost word for word with the empty text. So I think Drew's argument is a much better argument. And what it does is it helps us understand that what's happening in the copying of an ancient text is highly complex.

I mean, I have a word processor, Sean, that I don't have to worry about margins. When I come to the end of a line. I don't have to indent I don't have to say like oh my words too big at the end of the line I'm gonna have to you know, I mean it does it for me. I have spellcheck I have grammar really and now I have all kinds of AI to help me articulate myself Well in the ancient world didn't have any of that. They had so many things to consider Sean like Was their parchment

ruled or not ruled? That's important. Where are their guide dots to guide them in their copying? Was the parchment cracked? What was the color of the parchment? They had to consider this. When they came to the end of the line and they realized, oh no, my words too big. What do you do? Then when they were copying from a damaged text, what did they do? I honestly am of the persuasion that what's happening in one QIsAA and most of the Dead Sea Scrolls, it's just the complexity of copying in the ancient world.

There's a couple of things else I could say about that, but that's probably sufficient. There's lots of fascinating features of one QIAA. Well, maybe I'll say to our audiences, if you want us to come back and do a deep dive and maybe pull some graphics up and walk through some of the particulars, it would be a little bit more academic than we typically do on this channel.

Let me know, put a comment down, say yes, we want it, or no, you lost me already. Either one would be helpful for me to assess what helps you, our viewers, most on this topic. I know you're willing, because you love this stuff, Anthony, and your enthusiasm is just pouring through, which is awesome. Let me ask you these last couple questions

as we kind of wrap up. So you have some hesitance in using word for word, not because you don't think one QA was copied carefully and doesn't largely align with a Maserati text, but even the question, what does word for word mean with the example that you gave? So maybe briefly describe some of the texts whose nature may warrant such a description if such texts exist in the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Yeah. So I have never used the description word for word to describe 1Q-ISAEA. And I probably wouldn't. It's probably not the best as all of the conversation has indicated. But as you mentioned, it's still very closely aligned. But what's cool and what's getting lost in this whole conversation is there are Dead Sea Scrolls that do align with the MT. Word for word.

I would even go further. Letter for letter. Just pause that for a moment. Letter for letter. Now that's that's that's a little hyperbolic because there's one text, the Masada Leviticus B text that has one difference. One letter difference. And it does not change the meaning at all. So Emmanuel Tove says this text has about 473 words. In my calculation, it was about 600 words. And again, I've already talked about

how you can arrive at different words. And it's only one difference. And it's a difference of spelling. It's the difference. That's crazy. Do you represent an I with a consonant or not? That's the difference. Every single letter for letter aligns with the MT. The Leviticus Masada A scroll does the same thing.

It's very, very closely aligned with the MT. What's getting lost in this conversation, Sean, is that we're approaching one Q-I-Z-A from different perspectives. But what's getting lost is West Huff's original point, that there are Dead Sea Scrolls that are aligned word-for-word with MT. Now, less people have heard about

Massada Leviticus A and Massada Leviticus B for several reasons. On the one hand, it's Leviticus. It's not Isaiah. If I were to take a poll, you know, how many of you have done your daily devotion to Leviticus, you know, outside of those faithful Bible readers in the year, they don't read Leviticus, you know, so we haven't heard for it because it's Leviticus, outside of those faithful Bible readers in the year, they don't read Leviticus. So, we haven't heard for it because it's Leviticus. We also haven't heard about it because it's not entirely intact, right? Four hundred words, six hundred words is a lot different than, what did I say, 25,000 words.

So, your sample size is different, right? It's not as intact. Then the third reason is that it's not as old as 1Q-ISAEA. 1Q-ISAEA will date to 125 BC to 100 BC. That's the consensus, it's a text written in Hasmonean paleography, but Masada, Leviticus A and B, they all date to about 25 BC to 25 AD. So it's the turn of the era.

It's probably before the advent of Christianity are right at the cusp, right? And so it's a little bit younger of a text, but not much, We're talking, I don't know, 100 years younger, but it's still, it is letter for letter, word for word, Masada Leviticus B. You know, another reason why it's not as significant probably is because it's discovered at Masada. So that connection to the Essenes is, you know, I mean, like, you know, an ancient sectarian group known as the Essenes. I mean, that's pretty intriguing, right? You know, these people who go out into the caves and they

they do their ceremonies and they eat communal meals together. And I mean, that's fascinating stuff. I mean, Masada isn't as fascinating, right? It's a fortress. So I think it's a little less intriguing as well. But I would want to make very clear to your audience, and I mean, Joe Rogan, I would go further than the West Side. It's not just word for word, it's letter for letter. I mean, so you have this type of alignment in the Dead Sea Scrolls. And again, Sean, this isn't just perspective.

I mean, Talmud, who wrote, you know, the text on Masada, he is the isn't just perspective. I mean, Talmud who wrote the text on Masada, he is the one who says this. I mean, nobody's going to doubt this. And I would even go further if you would let me that every single text discovered at the other Judean desert sites are all Masoretic texts. They're all Masoretic texts. There's a Psalm scroll, There is a Minor Prophet scroll.

They are very, very closely aligned with Codex Leningrad. So when we're thinking about the Dead Sea Scrolls, we could divide them into two camps. You have the texts from Quran that preserve two important features. On the one hand, texts that align with MT and texts that do not align with MT. But when you're looking at the Judean desert sites, they're all MT. So how do you make sense of this difference, right? What I would say is it's a socio-religious issue happening here. And Emmanuel Tove argues for this, I do as well, that the Masoretic text

was the text for mainline Jews, as far as you can go back. Like when you're talking about the Pharisees, like their text is the Masoretic text. And the people at Masada are Pharisees. They're mainline Jews who have fled Jerusalem after the first Jewish revolt, and they take their texts with them and you have Masoretic texts.

The people in the desert have both. They have the NIV, the NLT, the message, the NASB, they have all of it, right? And why do they have it? Well, that's a good question. Why do they have diversity and unity? You know, these things don't contradict one another. I mean, you know, if I have somebody in my church

who's reading the NIV, actually it's actually common, Sean, for me, from the pulpit to say, hey, I'm reading from the ESV. Whose translation says this? And people raise their hand, whose translation says this and people raise their hand. I mean, it's a Bible study tool, different translations, different approaches to copying the Bible helps us understand the Bible. And the people at Qumran loved the Bible, loved it. They studied it all the time. So they have a lot of tools to help them understand God's Word. And I think that's why you're having the textual makeup as you have

in Qumran. So I guess to telescope back out, Sean, you do, West Huff's point still stands, maybe not with one Q, I, Z, A, word for word, but it does stand with several other texts. I would even say in some texts, letter by letter. That's remarkable. I guess the other thing you could argue from Leviticus is that it's not as messianic laden as Isaiah would be. And of course, the types and patterns of the blood sacrifice, of course, there's connection there with Christ But like you said Isaiah 7 and 9 and 11 and the suffering servant Isaiah 53 like explicit Some of the most commonly cited prophecies it makes sense people would lean into that more so than Leviticus Any last words anything we missed or maybe just encouragement for people as they talk about this. So, you know, there's the

trade-off between just trying to make a point for somebody who doesn't understand the Dead Sea Scrolls and then somebody who's a scholar. Like, what advice would you give just kind of to apologists and Christians when talking about these topics to be fair, but also point out some of the the strengths of what the Dead Sea Scrolls point out Yeah, so I would say you know what pointers never be afraid of facts We shouldn't be afraid of facts and we shouldn't we shouldn't feel the need And I don't think Wes Huff did this but for any Apologists or person who's listening to this never feel the need to overstate your case I think Wes Huff made a mistake as he said in his video But for any apologists or person who's listening to this, never feel the need to overstate your case.

I think Wes Huff made a mistake, as he said in his video. But we don't need to be afraid of the facts. Let's give people the facts. Let's not overstate our case. Let's not read more into the facts than the facts let us read in. Let's look at the facts. But then, as evangelicals in our various fields, like let's

do our best to construct a framework that is faithful to the Bible and is faithful to God. And I think when we look at the Dead Sea Scrolls, you could do that. I mean that's what I've done and other scholars have done as well. You know, there is an incredible amount of diversity preserved at the Dead Sea Scrolls. Differences, I've already talked about this. Most of them are very, very minor. Most of it is spelling. Most of it is updating the text. Some of it is interpreting the text and harmonizing the text.

But then it also includes an incredible amount of unity. And I would just say to the audience, like, what if God didn't allow the unity to be preserved? Like in God's sovereignty, when a Roman soldier took a knife and cut a text in half, when literally a cow went to the bathroom on these texts or a worm was eating, a worm was eating holes in the parchment, like what if in God's sovereignty, he didn't allow any of the unity to be preserved? And just the diversity. Like I would say like we should be thankful to God for the textual evidence that we do have. And ultimately at the end of the day, you know, the God who spoke his word is preserving his word exactly the way we want it to have.

And I don't think we need to complain about it. I think we need to do the best job we can with the facts we want it to have. And I don't think we need to complain about it. I think we need to do the best job we can with the facts and doing it in faith. And that's what I've tried to do. And I think when you look at the Dead Sea Scrolls, you can read it in a way where it really builds up our faith. I love it.

Last question. I'm curious, what if you were gonna give a text for someone to read and say, you know what? I wanna start and kind of get into this and understand it myself. I have a book from Peter Flint called The Dead Sea Scrolls, and he actually signed it for me, which was pretty cool. A few years ago, and I had a chance to meet him, so that's a treasure for me.

It's just called The Dead Sea Scrolls. But is there one that maybe you would recommend for people to start and yet get some depth and understanding of this? Yes, Weston Field. Let's see if I have it on me. I think it's right here actually. He has a full history. Unfortunately, he's recently passed away. But I would start with this short history,

The Dead Sea Scrolls, a short history, Weston Field. It's going to be complementary to the book you just showed the audience, Sean, because the book you just showed is an introduction to the Dead Sea Scrolls as a field. This is going to be an introduction to the field. So he's going to talk about the history, how were these things discovered, who were the major scholars at play. It's pretty cool stuff. So I'd recommend this as a great place to get started.

Awesome. I love it. All right, friends, let us know if you want us to come back and do a deep dive on some of these issues. Anthony, you're my guy. You know your stuff, you bring great enthusiasm, obviously love God's word and love studying this. So really thankful that you would come back. We will have you back on again, folks. Make sure you hit subscribe.

We've got lots of other programs coming up on the Bible, have a couple ones coming up on near death experiences again that were really fascinating. And a range of topics. I have a visit to a Buddhist temple like the Hindu temple that I visited. Gonna give a little tour and have a conversation with a monk with my son.

So make sure you hit subscribe. You won't wanna miss that. And we'd love to have you come study apologetics at Biola. We go into some depth on the Dead Sea Scrolls and biblical authority and transmission. In one of our classes I teach on the resurrection, problem of evil, information below. We'd love to have you come study and get a master's.

Or if you're not ready for that, we've got a certificate program. We'd love to walk you through more formally how to get some apologetics training. Anthony, always enjoy it. Really appreciate you taking the time to come on and hopefully bring some clarity on this issue and this debate that's still raging

as we film and post this. Thanks, brother. Thanks, brother. Thanks, brother. Thanks, brother. Thanks, brother. Thanks, brother. Thanks, brother.

Thanks, brother. Thanks, brother. Thanks, brother. Thanks, brother. Thanks, brother. Thanks, brother. Thanks, brother. Thanks, brother.

Thanks, brother. Thanks, brother. Thanks, brother. Thanks, brother.