Scrolling Back in Time: The Great Isaiah Scroll

Kim Phillips focuses in on the Great Isaiah Scroll, the oldest copy we have of the complete Hebrew text of Isaiah and one of the most important Dead Sea Scrolls. He explains the significance of the discovery in 1947 and what it tells us about the accuracy of scribes copying manuscripts over the years.

Languages Change

Anyone who attempts to read Shakespeare is all too aware that languages change over time. Words that were once common fall out of use and are replaced by new words. Ways of constructing sentences change over time. Spelling changes over time. Pronunciation changes. Sorry, Hamlet.

All of this is true for the Hebrew language, no less than for any other. This, strangely enough, forms a helpful starting point for this Artefact in Focus article on the Great Isaiah Scroll.

In 1947, one of the most significant manuscript finds in history took place: the initial discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. In a cave in the Judaean Desert, Bedouin shepherds found earthenware jars containing seven scrolls. One of these scrolls turned out to be a nearly complete copy of the Book of Isaiah. Nowadays, it is referred to either by its technical label 1QIsa^a or by its more descriptive name, ‘The Great Isaiah Scroll’. Today, the scroll is kept in the Shrine of the Book in Jerusalem.

Using a combination of radiocarbon dating and handwriting analysis, scholars have been able to date the Great Isaiah Scroll to around 125 BC. This means that the Great Isaiah Scroll is our oldest copy of the complete Hebrew text of Isaiah—by about 1000 years! Not until about the year AD 900 do we have other Hebrew manuscripts containing the book of Isaiah (the so-called Masoretic version of the Hebrew text).

Scholars’ first reaction when studying the Great Isaiah Scroll was amazement at how similar the text was to that of Isaiah found in the medieval Hebrew manuscripts. The text of the Book of Isaiah had been preserved with remarkable fidelity from the centuries before Christ right up to the Middle Ages.

Upon closer inspection, however, an even more remarkable conclusion was drawn: the text of Isaiah as we read it in the medieval Hebrew codices is, in fact, older—sometimes much older—than the text of Isaiah found in the Great Isaiah Scroll. This needs some explanation, and we need to begin by putting ourselves in the sandals of the scribes copying the Great Isaiah Scroll.

What’s a scribe to do?

Isaiah spoke many of his prophecies in and around the critical year 701 BC, but the scribes behind the Great Isaiah Scroll were working nearly 600 years later. These scribes would have spoken a very different Hebrew compared with that of Isaiah—not to mention the fact that they probably also spoke Aramaic and Greek. Some of the words spoken by Isaiah the prophet would have sounded very strange to these scribes. Some words they may not have recognized at all. Many of the spellings would have seemed strange to them, in the same way that many of Shakespeare's spellings seem strange to us.

In circumstances like these, scribes are faced with a choice: either they attempt to remain faithful to the text and language as it was originally spoken, or they choose to update the language and spelling to make the text more comprehensible to a contemporary reader. Usually, the situation is more complicated. Even a scribe attempting to maintain the antiquated features of a text may inadvertently slip up and subconsciously update the language in places. On the other hand, a scribe who feels free to update the language and spelling may still feel a responsibility to maintain some aspects of the antiquated style.

Both the ‘updating’ and ‘preserving’ tendencies are clearly seen in the Great Isaiah Scroll, and this turns out to be hugely significant. Let’s look at a few examples.

What ‘r’ you talking about?

Let's start with a place name. In antiquity the name Damascus was spelled in two main ways: with an ‘r’: דרמשק (drmsq) or without an ‘r’: דמשק (dmsq).

The spelling without the ‘r’ is the older spelling. In Akkadian, Egyptian, Hebrew, and Aramaic documents dating from about 1500 BC to 500 BC, the place name is consistently spelled ‘dmsq’. Only in later documents does the name start being spelled with an ‘r’. For example, in the book of Chronicles, one of the latest biblical books, the name starts to be spelled דרמשק (‘drmsq’). In Rabbinic Hebrew from the first few Christian centuries, the name is almost always spelled with an ‘r’.

In the Great Isaiah Scroll, the place name ‘Damascus’ is consistently spelled דרמשק (‘drmsq’). This is not particularly surprising: back in 700 BC, Isaiah the prophet would have called the place ‘dmsq’ (no ‘r’). However, 600 years later, the scribes who copied the Great Isaiah Scroll now called the place ‘drmsq’ and so they copied the name with an ‘r.’

What is far more surprising is that in the medieval Masoretic Text of Isaiah, the place name ‘Damascus’ is consistently spelled דמשק (‘dmsq’)—the old form of the name with no ‘r’, just like Isaiah himself used to pronounce it! This is quite remarkable: the older form of the place name is preserved in the Masoretic Text from about AD 900, while the younger form of the place name is used in the Great Isaiah Scroll from 125 BC.

Shedding light on the text

Let’s take another example, this time involving the updating of unfamiliar words. In Isaiah 13:10, the Masoretic Text reads לא יהלו אוֹרם (‘their light will not shine’, lo yahellu oram). The word here which means ‘shine’ (יהלו, yahellu) is quite rare in biblical Hebrew and appears only four times in the Hebrew Bible. From Akkadian and Arabic, as well as from the context in the biblical occurrences, it is clear that the word means ‘shine’. The far more common word in biblical Hebrew for ‘shine’ is האיר (he'ir), which survives in postbiblical Hebrew and into Mishnaic and Rabbinic Hebrew.

When the scribe of the Great Isaiah Scroll reached Isaiah 13:10, he knew from the context that the verb must mean ‘to shine’, but instead of copying the antiquated form יהלו (yahellu), he replaced it with the more common, easier-to-understand form יאירו (ya'iru).

Once again, then, the Masoretic Text from about AD 900 contains the older, more original language, even though by 125 BC this language was antiquated and hard to understand.

The third example is even more mind-blowing.

An earth-shattering discovery

In the medieval Masoretic Text of Isaiah 51:9, it reads: ‘You are the one who shattered Rahab’ (המחצבת רהב). The word used for ‘shattered’ here is quite unexpected: ח-צ-ב (h-ts-b). This verb is usually used for hewing wood or stone. What’s more, it looks and sounds suspiciously similar to another verb meaning ‘to shatter,’ מ-ח-צ (m-h-ts). For this reason, many scholars have suggested that the Masoretic Text is incorrect at this point and should be corrected to המוחצת (hamohetset). This is possible, of course. Copying errors happen.

When the Great Isaiah Scroll was found, sure enough, the text at Isaiah 51:9 used המוחצת (hamohetset), the more common verb for ‘shatter’! Many scholars, therefore, took this as the silver bullet proving that the Masoretic Text was indeed wrong at this point and needed correction.

However, we must never count our textual chickens before they are hatched. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, thousands of clay tablets were found at a place called Ugarit in Syria. These contained hundreds of texts in a language closely related to Biblical Hebrew, dating from around 1200 BC. When scholars read these texts, lo and behold, there was the verb ח-צ-ב (h-ts-b) being used in a combative context very similar to that of Isaiah!

In other words, it seems that back in Isaiah’s day it was quite legitimate to use the verb ח-צ-ב (h-ts-b) to mean ‘shatter’ in a context of battle, in addition to its (more common?) meaning of hewing stone or wood. Centuries later, though, by the time the scribes copied the Great Isaiah Scroll, this verb no longer made sense in the context, and so it was replaced by the more familiar, similar-looking verb מ-ח-צ (m-h-ts). Once again, then, the medieval Masoretic Hebrew text has managed to preserve a far older, more original, form of the text of Isaiah than the form found in the Great Isaiah Scroll.

What does all this mean? So what if, in the Hasmonean Kingdom, some Johnny-come-lately was going around adding the letter ‘r’ into the name Damascus and updating old language?

When you think about it, it actually has stunning ramifications. The fact that the Masoretic Text frequently preserves linguistic forms that are older—sometimes much older—than the ‘updated’ version from 125 BC means that, in the Second Temple period (from about 500 BC onward), there must have been some extraordinarily conservative scribes who made it their mission to preserve the biblical text without updating it. They scrupulously wrote ‘Damascus’ instead of ‘Darmascus,’ and they meticulously copied המחצבת (hamachtzevet), even though they, too, must have wondered whether the text should read המחצת (hamohetzet). In these, and thousands of other cases, they refused to update, modify, or ‘tidy up’ the text. Consequently, when the scribes of the 2nd century BC sat down and read this version of Isaiah, it already felt oooooold to them—like when we read Shakespeare!

This form of the text—the highly antiquated, non-updated version—is the form that eventually came down to us as the Masoretic Text. In the Lord’s kindness, he has given us, in the Masoretic Text of the tenth century AD, a version that is linguistically much older than the Great Isaiah Scroll from 125 BC. Thanks to those conservative scribes, we today can ‘speak Isaiah’s speech . . . as he pronounc'd it to us.’ Since, ultimately, this is the Lord’s speech to us, not just Isaiah’s, this is an indescribably wonderful thing!