1 and 2 Kings

Sources

• Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library (Israel Antiquities Authority) (opens in a new tab)

  Explore the archive by manuscript, site, and language

• Peter W. Flint, “The Significance of the Biblical Dead Sea Scrolls,” Southwestern Journal of Theology 53.1 (2010), manuscript table (opens in a new tab)

  Southwestern Journal of Theology 53, no. 1 (2010): 15-25

Objections & responses

Three fragmentary copies can’t establish that Kings lines up with the later text. Isn’t that agreement from silence?

Fair. The fragments agree with the Masoretic tradition where they overlap, and the coverage is limited; that is all that can be said. Kings also has a well-known chronological divergence between the Masoretic and Septuagint traditions that the Qumran fragments are too small to settle. The honest summary is present, fragmentary, and consistent where checkable.

Appears under 1 claim in this case

• The Dead Sea Scrolls show the Old Testament text was copied with remarkable stability across about a thousand years, alongside a documented plurality of text forms.