Today a fellow social studies teacher and I took thirty high school students to San Diego’s Museum of Natural History. They have an exhibit of the Dead Sea Scrolls (essentially the same exhibit that was in GR a few years back). As I walked through the exhibit there were a number of things that caused me to stop, ponder, and stand in AWE.
1) God’s sovereign care of His scriptures. Before the 1947 discovery of the scrolls, the earliest extant Hebrew manuscript was the Masoretic text that dated to about 1000 AD. The Dead Sea scrolls date all the way back to 250 BC to 68 AD. What a discovery – and by happenstance! When one compares the Dead Sea scrolls (68 AD) to the Masoretic text (1000 AD) there is essentially NO difference between the text. The differences that do occur are mostly variations in spelling comparable to “Savior” to “Saviour.” Surely God’s word will remain!
2) The Qumran community and the other Jewish groups of the OT and NT times so reverenced the LORD that they would often refuse to write out his name. Instead they would write …. in place of the four Hebrew letters of God’s name. In comparison, I think of how flippantly we toss God’s name for this, that, and the other thing. The Hebrews knew the power of a Name. Throughout the OT we hear a phrase like “call upon the Name of the LORD.” There is power in God’s NAME.
3) Besides showcasing the Qumran scrolls, the exhibit included biblical manuscripts from the past 2,000 years. There were numerous illuminated manuscripts (biblical texts with decorated letters or illustrations in the margins). Included in this collection were sections of the first commissioned handwritten illuminated manuscript since the printing press known as the St. John’s Bible. (Click here to check out their website!) The illuminated page highlights the written word but accentuates it with imagination. Sometimes I think that in the age of the printing press, we have lost the abiliity to read the printed word with a sanctified imagination. One can’t but do that when confronted with an illumined page of Scripture.
I praise God for preserving these texts for 2000 years to be enjoyed and studied so that his Name may be praised.
