Reliability of the Bible: Dead Sea Scrolls and Isaiah 53

The Bible as God’s Word and the Ministry of Genesis Apologetics

Okay, so you guys have probably heard about our ministry because I was here last year, but if you're new, my name's Dan Biddle, I'm with Genesis Apologetics, and we go around northern California and give about 200 talks every year on the Bible and Genesis, and we show scientifically how the historical account that's laid out in the book of Genesis really actually happened, like God creating it in six days, and we give all the evidence for that.

And we have several different books. These books are actually sold by Answers in Genesis. They have our stuff there in their bookstore. We focus on reaching mostly public school kids. You guys are in a great private Christian school here, but I still teach at Capital Christian and places like this because we want kids to understand the truth of God's.

Word.

Okay, so we talked about the movie. It's only one night. It's coming out just on February 23rd, but it will be at basically every major theater.

Around.

It's in 700 theaters around the U .S., but I think the closest one here is probably Blue Oaks that will be hosting it. So you can send us an email if you want to get in a ticket contest that we're doing, a ticket giveaway, or you guys can just grab a bag and fill out that homework assignment and we'll get you a free ticket.

Common Objections to the Bible

Okay, so if you guys ever heard things like this before, have you ever heard, the Bible's full of errors? Have you ever heard that before? Oh, my gosh, the Bible's full of errors, but lots of people heard that.

What about, is the Bible even relevant today? Well, the Bible was written 2 ,000 years ago and older. How do we know it's even relevant for today, right? That's a good question. What about, do we know that the Bible was accurately copied over the centuries?

So take a look here, guys. We have a modern day Bible that was translated and recorded over thousands of years of copies. How do we know that the people who are writing down the copies did it accurately?

We're going to prove that they did it accurately today, but when did they invent the copy machine? Like you go put something on the copy machine and get a copy. When did that happen? Like less than a hundred years ago, maybe?

They didn't have copy machines way back when, so how would they get copies of the Bibles.

For us?

They were all written. That's exactly right. So we'll be answering that question. Was it accurately written down? What about how do we know that the Bible was written by God? I have some really compelling evidence that we're going to look at today that should prove to you guys that God himself was the one who wrote the Bible as he wrote it through people.

Scripture’s Divine Inspiration and Trustworthiness

Okay, so how is the Bible different than any other book? Well, it says, the Bible says about itself here in 2 Peter, for no prophecy or no scripture ever was made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.

So that means that God himself wrote the scripture through men as he told them what to write. Here's 2 Timothy. It says, all scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, reproof, correction, and for training in righteousness.

So the Bible's pretty clear that God himself wrote these words through people as he inspired them and told them what to write. So here's a couple other things that the Bible says about itself. Numbers says that God is not human, that he should lie, or a human being, that he should change his mind.

So the Bible cannot have lies in it. God who does not lie promised before the beginning of time, that's in Titus. Jesus said in Matthew that before heaven and earth pass away, not a single jot or a tittle, not even the dot your I or a cross your T will disappear from God's word.

Isn't that amazing that he said that 2000 years ago and here we have his words today completely exactly as he said them. So Psalm even says that the words of the Lord are pure and Proverbs says that every word of God is flawless.

I'm hearing some things here in the Bible that say we can really, really trust in it. So God's word says that it's always true, unchanging, perfect, permanent, and the Bible even says here that it's honored with God with his own name.

Psalms 138 says you have exalted above all things your name and your word. So do you think God takes the Bible seriously? Yes, I do too. Okay, so moving on from that, how is the Bible different from other books?

Well, you know it was written by 40 different authors over a time span of about 1 ,600 years in three different languages, 66 different books over that time span of 1 ,600 years and it's been unchanged for two millennia and it's accurate in all of its historic, geographic, and scientific references.

So can you imagine that for a minute? We've got this one Bible here. It's got 66 books. It was written by 40 different people over a time span of 1 ,600 years and it does not contradict itself. Isn't that incredible?

Whenever it talks about geography, it gets it right. When it talks about historical events, it gets it right. And whenever it makes a scientific reference, like the world is suspended and the world is a spear, the Bible had that stuff right, you know, centuries before we did.

So the Bible is reliable and we can show how it's been accurately translated throughout all time, but when I do speaking at colleges, I just ask people, how could you do that without God's help? How could you take a book that's got 66 different books in it, thousands of pages, written by 40 different people and not contradict itself?

So God had to have a hand in its writing. Okay, so the two things I want you guys to know today, here's the two big key takeaways. Number one, I want you to know that God wrote the Bible through people because it foretells the future.

I'm going to try to prove to you guys today that the Bible actually foretold the future. And then I also want you to trust that it was reliably copied throughout this whole timeline, this whole generation.

I want to show you how reliably copied it was over the centuries. We're going to look at just one chapter. So who's heard of the book of Isaiah? Okay, we're going to look at just one chapter in the book of Isaiah.

Isaiah 53 and the Prophecy of the Messiah

And the original book of Isaiah was written way back here. This is the 700 BC scroll. So imagine some guy sitting in some gloomy cave somewhere with candlelight with ink pigment writing down the book of Isaiah as God told him what to write.

Here's some incredible stuff. So Isaiah was writing these things down and here's what he said. Isaiah is talking about a future Messiah that's going to come and he says these things about this future Messiah.

He says, this person will be despised and rejected by men. He'll be a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces, he will be despised and we esteemed him not, which means we didn't regard him like as a king.

Surely he took up our sins or our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him and afflicted, but he was pierced for our transgressions. Isn't that interesting?

Here we have a Bible scroll written 700 years before Christ was here saying that a Messiah is going to come that's going to have all these things happen to him and he's even going to be pierced for our transgressions.

Where was Jesus pierced? In his hands and where else? His feet and where else? His two wrists or his hands and his sides. He was pierced five different places. Here this prophet Isaiah said he's going to be pierced for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities and the punishment that brought us peace was put upon him and by his wounds we will be healed.

So the prophet Isaiah is foretelling what this Messiah is going to say or what this Messiah is going to do. So check this one out. This is going on through the book of Isaiah in the same chapter. Isaiah says, we all like sheep have gone astray.

Each of us has turned to his own way and the Lord has laid upon him the sins of us all. So here's Isaiah in this dark cave 700 years before Christ writing all these things that are going to happen in the future.

But he goes on. He says he will be led like a lamb to the slaughter and as a sheep before her shearers is silent so he did not open his mouth. So what is a sheep before his shearers? What does that mean?

Yeah.

Okay.

So the sheep is quiet. But what is a sheep's shearer?

Yeah.

What do you think? Exactly. So this prophet writing way back here 700 BC is saying that this Messiah that's going to come in the future, he's going to be led like a lamb to the slaughter and as a lamb is quiet before its shearers, the person is going to take off all of its fur.

He will not open his mouth in defense. So that's what this prophet is saying about this future Messiah. He also says he will be assigned a grave with the wicked and with the rich in his death. Though he had done no violence nor was any deceit in his mouth.

So here's this guy Isaiah writing 700 years before Christ came saying whoever this Messiah is is going to be killed and buried in a rich man's grave. Well look what it says in the book of Matthew here.

As evening approached there came a rich man from Arimathea named Joseph who had himself become a disciple of Jesus. Going to Pilate he asked for Jesus' body and Pilate ordered that it be given to him.

Joseph took the body, wrapped it in a clean linen cloth and placed it in his own new tomb that he had cut out of the rock. He rolled a big stone in front of the entrance to the tomb and went away. Joseph of Arimathea was a rich guy.

So here's this Messiah or this prophet telling about this Messiah who's going to be pierced for our transgressions. He's not going to defend himself when he's brought before the courts. He's going to take our sins upon himself and he's going to be buried in a rich man's grave.

Does that sound like he already knew what happened to Jesus 700 years later? Those are some pretty incredible prophecies. In fact there's 13 of them. If you go back tonight and look and read through Isaiah 53 you'll find some incredibly even more specific things.

So that's what happened when this prophet Isaiah wrote the original Bible. So he wrote this chapter, it was actually a huge long scroll, chapter 53 is what we just looked at briefly. But here's what they wrote in 700.

The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Reliability of the Text

Then we've got these guys the Essenes, well you know what? They've got a copy of the Isaiah scroll but how did they get it? If this was written 200 years before Christ how did these guys get this scroll?

How do you think so? So the Essenes are right here 200 years before Christ and they've got a copy of the Isaiah.

Scroll.

Well they had to get it copied from the original, right? Wouldn't that make sense? So the original Isaiah scroll was written here then they made lots of copies, more copies, more copies, all the scribes did this by hand.

Then they put it in a jar and they put it into a cave and buried it. And then a huge war happened and they forgot about it for centuries. So this dead sea scroll was stuck in these jars back in a cave for thousands of years, for a couple thousand years.

Then we go on and they made copies from other copies that they had here to this Aleppo Codex which is about 930 AD. Then they go over here and they're making all these translations and translations. But how do we know that the Bible we have today is the same as the Bible that goes way back there?

So here's the modern Bible and we can match it up to these Bibles and to this Bible. But do we know it was the same Bible as recorded back here? Or back here? Or back here? Well there's a way to test that.

Because what happened in 1943, there was this shepherd boy going around in some caves in the Middle East and then he lost a goat. So you know what he did to go find his lost goat? He took one of these.

He grabbed a rock because his goat, you guys ever seen goats climb up like on YouTube they can climb up these incredible mountain faces? Well this goat had gone way up in this cave and so rather than go up in the cave and try to get the goat out, he just starts chucking these rocks at the goat.

Then he managed to get a good shot, he threw this rock and went way up into the cave and he heard some glass shatter inside of a cave. And he's thinking, how can there be glass inside of a cave that no one's been in for hundreds and hundreds of years?

This happened 50 years ago or so, well 1947. So this little shepherd boy who threw this rock went into the cave and you know what he found? He found this. He found the Dead Sea Scroll because one of his rocks busted one of these jars.

He walked into this cave and saw not just this jar, but dozens and dozens and dozens of other jars with all kinds of other scrolls in it. It was the biggest archaeological find in the 21st century and happened in your guys' lifetime, well 1947.

Yeah, question. No, these are just copies. Copy of the jar, copy of the scroll. So but he found it, so guess what we can do now? We can take this scroll that was based on the original, which was written before Christ, both of these were, and we can compare it to what we have today.

So they took this scroll after the kid found it, broke the jar, and they took it all the way over here and they opened it up and they can compare it word for word, letter for letter for our modern Bible.

And that's how we can test if it was reliably recorded through all these years. You guys want to know what they found? So here's what they found. We will go through that. If I can find my clicker here, here we go.

So here's just a recap. The original Isaiah Scroll is written here. It was copied about 100 to 200 BC in the jar that we just found. And then we've got the Aleppo Codex here and we've got when the Isaiah Scroll was found.

So here's what they found. If you take the entire chapter 53 that I just read to you that has incredible prophecies about Jesus who was going to come 700 years later, here is a word for word comparison.

Can anyone see the word that's different? When they compared the modern Bible to the one that was 2 ,200 years earlier, they found a difference. Can you guys spot it? You should be able to spot it.

Of life.

So in fact, they found that of 166 Hebrew words in Isaiah 53, they found 17 letters that were different between the 2 ,200 year old Bible and the Bibles that we have today. But 10 letters were only minor spelling differences, four letters were stylistic changes because they had some style changes that happened over a couple thousand years, and three letters were added and it's the word light.

But it really doesn't make that big of a difference because if you look here, it says that Jesus will be the light and will be satisfied or he will see the light of life and be satisfied. Not a big difference.

But you guys, that's incredible because what we've just shown here is that we have 2 ,200 years of Bible translations and in a whole chapter, chapter 53, of 166 words, only one little difference. So you can do that for the rest of the scriptures that they found in the Dead Sea Scrolls and you'll find the same thing over and over again, incredibly reliable.

So here's the cave that the boy wandered into in 1947, threw a rock up there and that's where he found all these Dead Sea Scroll jars. He was a little shepherd boy and they dug out more scrolls in 1948 and they're written by the Essenes.

Look at that, 40 ,000 scroll fragments were written down and put into this cave in several different jars in 11 caves. They were all produced prior to about 70 AD, right before a big war happened and they include every book of our Old Testament except for Esther.

Every single book in the Old Testament and it's 2 ,200 years old. So we can now compare by laying that old Bible on top of our modern Bible and it's incredibly identical. There's no reliable differences between the versions.

Here's a copy of the Isaiah Scroll that they found. Look at that thing, it's incredible. You can go see it on Wikipedia if you'd like. That's one of seven complete scrolls. Here is a zoom up of the Isaiah 53.

That's where we can go. You can go through and look at all that Hebrew writing and they can compare it to the ones that we have all through generations and it's incredibly the same. So how is something like that able to happen over many, many years of translations?

Well, I'll tell you how it happened. The scribes, the guys that would write down these copies, they were called the Talmudists and the early scribes and look at the requirement. If you wanted to be a scribe in the old days, here's what you had to do.

You can only write the scribes or the scrolls on skins of clean animals. You had to be a Jewish person. The scroll was fastened by strings taken from only clean animals. Every skin must contain a certain number of columns throughout the entire codex.

It's got to have a certain number of columns and rows to it. No word or letter, not even a yod written from memory. They had to do the whole thing from copy to copy and all kinds of different requirements.

These guys were obsessive compulsive about writing it and guess what happened if after they wrote the scroll, it was tested by another scribe and he would go through and count every.

Letter.

Guess what happened if they were off by just one? They'd burn the whole scroll and it would take one year for a scribe to write the Bible. So that's how God preserved his word through a couple thousand years of reliably recording it because people were incredibly meticulous on how they did it.

And I think that's one thing I want you to learn is that it's all reliable. But the second thing is, to me, what's so amazing is how God inspired Isaiah to prophesy, to foretell what Jesus was going to look like, how he was going to die, where he was going to be buried, that he would be pierced for our transgressions.

All these specific things and we know for sure that they were written before Jesus came because we have the Dead Sea Scrolls. That's some amazing stuff. So guys, do we have any questions? I think that's about it for this talk today and we'll take some questions.