Numbers

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

4QNum-b has expansions matching the Samaritan Pentateuch, so it isn’t quite true that the copies match the later text.

A fair refinement. 4QNum-b is a mixed text that sometimes agrees with the Samaritan tradition and sometimes with the Septuagint against the Masoretic. That is a real finding, and stating it plainly strengthens the case rather than weakening it. The narrative and legal content of Numbers is stable across all of them; the differences are the kind textual critics use to reconstruct the earliest form of the text, which is what a recoverable tradition looks like.

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.