Toto

An article in my morning paper:

Southern California universities acquire rare religious texts: Five fragments of the 2,000-year-old Dead Sea Scrolls are in the collection of Azusa Pacific

I contemplated firing off a letter to the editor about the reporter referring to the "word of God" as if that were an agreed upon description of the DSS. But this is more interesting:

This, of course, reflects the Samaritan version of holy scripture. See The meaning of the Dead Sea scrolls (or via: amazon.co.uk) By James C. VanderKam, Peter Flint, on Google books - page 95.

More on Charlesworth on Deuteronomy - the fragment might be a Samaritan alteration of the text, or the original text.

This fragment has been acquired by an up and coming evangelical college in Southern California. This particular fragment seems to demonstrate that the Holy Writ has been altered for convenience during its history. How will these evangelicals deal with this fact? :constern01:

spin

While Deut 27:4 is poorly covered in the DSS manuscript collection -- until this fragment the part that talked of the location was a lacuna --, the majority of fragments available for Deuteronomy are generally closer to the MT. The SP (Samaritan Pentateuch) is nowhere near as well supported, so a fragment which fills the lacuna with SP tradition cannot be seen in itself as "original" as you put it in the OP title. There are over 30 copies of Deut represented at Qumran. Only a few reflect SP. It does mean though that the SP has a much older tradition than many Jews have been willing to admit. It doesn't help us with the original version.


spin

Celsus

Methinks he's trying to justify the amount he spent acquiring it to his governors

Rick Sumner

Charlesworth is an Evangelical. Until his wife shows up with an empty pill bottle and a note, we can probably assume he's dealing with it okay. Somehow muddling through the horror. I think you're confusing "Evangelical" with "Fundamentalist."

Regards,
Rick Sumner

Rick Sumner

Give the man a cigar. We have a winner. The most obvious answer has nothing to do with text crit.

Regards,
Rick Sumner

Toto

Azusa Pacific is not fundamentalist, and their Statement of Faith does not mention anything about the Bible, but I would still think that the idea of scripture being altered for political reasons would not sit well with any but the most liberal or post-Christians.

After all, their statements on Human Sexuality and Alcohol are full of Biblical references and justification. What if those were altered for political convenience?

But I note that Wikipedia lists Dan Barker at the top of the list of their prominent graduates, followed by a long list of athletes, entertainers, and a profesional poker player.

Celsus

Not really. Fundamentalist Christians believe the original Bible is perfect and inerrant, though it is possible and acknowledged that the version we have may not be a perfect transmission (but none of the errors affect meanings, so they claim... which is true to the extent it doesn't affect their reading because they're hopelessly ignorant about the historical tussles over place names or deity names or any other number of political issues buried in the text - then again, we're fairly ignorant about all the potential political battles that may have been taking place over the text from the 6th century BCE on). After all, scribal error is part of Bible Study 101 isn't it?

Charlesworth isn't a hopelessly incompetent scholar (and certainly not an apologist) regardless of his beliefs, the very fact that he calls a 2nd century piece of parchment an 'original' without qualification makes the statement appear to be directed more at his academic superiors than anything else