Exodus

Sources

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

  Explore the archive by manuscript, site, and language

• Wikipedia, list of manuscripts from Qumran Cave 4 (opens in a new tab)

Objections & responses

One Exodus scroll, 4QpaleoExod-m, follows the expanded Samaritan-type text, not the Masoretic. Isn’t that a different Exodus at Qumran?

Correct, and it is a good example of the textual plurality the Scrolls reveal: in the last centuries BC several text forms circulated side by side. The expansions in the Samaritan-type Exodus are mostly harmonizing additions that repeat material from elsewhere in the Pentateuch; they do not introduce new content or change the narrative. Seeing that form beside the proto-Masoretic one is exactly how scholars learned which readings are older. The claim is not that only one Exodus existed but that the one that became standard was faithfully preserved.

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.