The Isaiah Scroll
'Just Stories?' #30
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The early Christians made great use of Old Testament prophecies. In particular, they understood Isaiah 53 to be a prophecy about the death of Jesus.
This is why it is important to know how old the book of Isaiah is, and how reliable the text we have is Is it the result of tampering by early Christians? We could have said that before 1947: The oldest Hebrew copy of Isaiah before the Dead Sea Scrolls were found dated to around 900 AD.
But there were two copies of Isaiah among the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the older one dates from a century before Jesus was born. This shows that the text of Isaiah has not been changed. Today, we can see this scroll in the Shrine of the Book, in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.
Isaiah 53 v. 4-9:
'Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him and afflicted...
He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his stripes we are healed. We all like sheep have gone astray, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquities of us all. He was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth...
He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death.'
With James Greig, Zenas Heritage Tours.
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