TODAY'S DEVOTION ON THE BIBLE
Another reason modern-day translators prefer the older manuscripts to the later more numerous ones is because of the greatest biblical archeological discovery of all time. In 1946, 335 years after the King James Version of the Bible was published, a young Bedouin shepherd boy discovered scrolls housed in clay jars in the caves of Qumran on Israel’s West Bank near the Dead Sea. By the time archeologists were through excavating this site, 931 manuscripts or fragments of manuscripts had been discovered.
These manuscripts, known today as the Dead Sea Scrolls, are the greatest discovery of all time when it comes to affirming the authenticity of the Old Testament. These scrolls predate all other known copies of the Old Testament by 1100 years. Among them is a scroll of the Old Testament Book of Isaiah that reads almost exactly like the Book of Isaiah in present-day English translations of the Bible.
Following the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the late William Barclay, a well-known author and Bible scholar, declared that “we need have no fear that…our modern Hebrew text is anything but accurate.”
Don Walton
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