There are many people today who doubt that the Bible has been accurately copied throughout the centuries. These people believe that changes were made as the scriptures were being copied. I would begin by telling them why we do not have the original copies. When the original scriptures were written they did not have the technology we have today. Therefore, they had to write them by hand and they decomposed overtime. Plummer states “It’s also because foreign nations burned Israel’s holy places on multiple occasions and because Jews disposed of their scrolls whenever they became too worn to use” (Jones 39). I would then begin to explain how the Old Testament and New Testament scriptures were copied and preserved over time.
The Old Testament was written by multiple authors over a long period of time. The authors of the Old Testament wrote on stones, clay tablets, copper, silver, gold, wooden panels, papyrus, and leather. The Old Testament authors would use styles when they were writing on
…show more content…
This group of people help to add vowel markings, accents, and marginal notes to preserve the traditional reading of every text. They were very knowledgeable about how many words and letters belonged in every book in their Bible. Their copy of scripture became the most reliable source of original scripture that they had back then. In 1947, people began to doubt how accurate their interpretations were. They were unsure how closely the Maseorete followed the more ancient text. This was until a young man who was a shepherd discovered what is known as the Dead Sea Scrolls. While he was searching for one of his lost sheep, he tossed a stone into a cave. When the rock was tossed it landed and shattered pottery. Inside the pottery, he found some of the first Dead Sea Scrolls. Many believe that these scrolls were written by a group called the Essenes that lived in an isolated desert known as