Evidence · Case 10 · Islam
The Dead Sea Scrolls
One exhibit from the free evidence repository at apologetics.pro.
The Dead Sea Scrolls, discovered near Qumran and predating Christianity, include Old Testament texts that show a high degree of stability when compared with much later copies. This gives independent, physical evidence that the Hebrew scriptures were transmitted carefully over long spans of time.
Sources
Objections & responses
- The Dead Sea Scrolls are irrelevant to the Muslim claim, which concerns the Injil given to Jesus, not the Hebrew Bible. And Muslims don’t typically claim the Torah was rewritten after Muhammad.
The Scrolls are relevant to the corruption of the Tawrat, which is part of the traditional doctrine of tahrif, but the Gospel is the main point of dispute, and the weight belongs on the New Testament manuscripts. Treat the Scrolls as a parallel case for the Old Testament: the same kind of evidence, showing the same kind of stability, for the other half of the Bible the Qur’an says was given by God.