Modern Vs Ancient Bible (Same/different)?

[Manji2012]

I have heard someone say that, our modern Bible is different from the Bible of the ancient world.

I have heard someone say that, the modern Bible is the same as the Dead sea scrolls. The dead sea scrolls is the oldest Bible? If so, it is the same as modern Bible?

 

[juantoo3]

Kindest Regards, Manji, and welcome to CR!

I have heard someone say that, our modern Bible is different from the Bible of the ancient world.

I have heard someone say that, the modern Bible is the same as the Dead sea scrolls. The dead sea scrolls is the oldest Bible? If so, it is the same as modern Bible?

This is why one must be careful whom one listens to.

Which "modern" Bible? Which "ancient" Bible? Considering modern Bibles are translations, then yes, they are different from the ancient manuscripts. I do believe most translators do their best with what they understand to convey the essence of the original, but there is always the prospect of nuance being lost in any translation.

As for the relationship between the DSS and the "modern" Bible, there is none. However, there was a complete copy of the book of Isaiah, as well as fragments of other Old Testament books, found among the DSS. These would be "ancient" Biblical scripts. By the way, the DSS Isaiah (100 BC) has no discernable difference with the Textus Receptus Isaiah (400 AD) translated for the KJV "modern" Bible, even with a 500 year span between them.

I hope this helps. Please feel free to confirm or refute from outside sources what I am saying here.

 

[Thomas]

I have heard someone say that, our modern Bible is different from the Bible of the ancient world.

Well, the 'modern' versions are translations. And some are translations made to present a pre-determined idea, so there might be differences, yes.

I have heard someone say that, the modern Bible is the same as the Dead sea scrolls. The dead sea scrolls is the oldest Bible? If so, it is the same as modern Bible?

Not quite.

Among the DSS scrolls might be Books that are part of the sacred texts of the Jews and the Christians, but there is no Bible, complete, among the DSS.

The Hebrew Canon was not set until about 80AD. Ther Christian Canon was not formalised until the 15th century, so even using the word 'bible' is an anachronism and inaccurate.

The scholarly opinion is that the accepted modern translations (King Kames, Challoner, Duay Rheims, etc.) have stylistic differences due to translation, nevertheless they have not altered the theological meaning of the text. They say the same thing, in slightly different ways.

Modern translations, technically correct, are often the most drab.

Comparisons have been made with Hebrew texts, Aramaic texts, Syriac texts, Greek texts ... and recently with some texts found amnong the Qmran finds ... the Book of Daniel, for one, and some of the Christian apocryphal books, left out of the Hebrew Scriptures because there was, at the time (the Council of Jamnia, c80AD) no extant Hebrew version, have been found, in the Hebrew, at Qmran.

But there is no complete bible among the DSS, and the Dead Sea Scrolls cannot themselves be regarded as an authoratitive means of judging a text.

Thomas

 

[Francis king]

manji... it all depends on who u ask....

the simpletons will tell u that it's the same now as it's always been, the cleverer ppl will tell u that the bible has been revised that many times we're not actually sure which bits of it are original, and which aren't...

the dead sea scrolls were a collection of oddments and fragments discovered in around 1949 near the dead sea... most of these fragments bear no reference to any text in the modern versions of the bible... for instance, in them there is a gospel of Mary, and a gospel of Thomas, neither of which are contained in our modern bibles, and they are generally regarded as apochrypa, or pseudographia, fragments which we cannot place and don't fit in with the churches' current ideology, and some say these are false writings, fakes, stuff from obscure sects, and not of the true church, yet...

if u look at the councils of the early catholic church, many schisms occurred because the bishops themselves could not decide what was real and what wasn't, what should be included in the canon, what the major articles of faith should be, how we viewed Mary, etc, and these disputes are the reason why we have so many different types of christian, such as catholics, and orthodoxes, and protestants, to name but a few...

I think that if we want a true picture of christianity, we should look at the new testament, alongside the dead sea scrolls and the russian and greek orthodox churches interpretation of these texts and alongside the Koran, also, and then maybe we get a fuller appreciation of what christianity is, and who Jesus was... but maybe that's just me...

 

[wil]

Namaste Manji

As Francis, Thomas and Juan alluded to I think your question may be a little imprecise.

We've got what the scrolls that Jesus studied...the Jewish texts of the time.

Then we've got the hundreds of books that Christians handed amongst each other. They were comprised of Jewish texts and those written from about 60-300...

Then we've finally got your Ancient Bible...the 66 books that were canonized. Today's bible's vary from those original 66 in that various versions were created in translating and interpreting. And while it is true, shuffle a word or two here or there and you get quite the different perspective. So for those discussing nuance of texts big difference...for the overall flavor and stories....little difference...that is in the past 1700 years...

However there is another story if you add back in the apocrypha, septugent, books like Gospel of Judas, Mary...or the book of Enoch.

 

[bob x]

"the dead sea scrolls were a collection of oddments and fragments discovered in around 1949 near the dead sea... most of these fragments bear no reference to any text in the modern versions of the bible... for instance, in them there is a gospel of Mary, and a gospel of Thomas..."
Francis, you are confusing the Dead Sea Scrolls (Jewish literature, containing Biblical texts, commentaries on those texts, discipline codes and liturgical hymns for a monastic community, and a number of other books of widely varied nature) with the Nag Hammadi library (a collection of books from early gnostic Christians, with very different gospels and radical conceptions of what Jesus was about).