Episode Transcript
Carey Griffel: Welcome to Genesis Marks the Spot, where we raid the ivory tower of biblical theology without ransacking our faith. My name is Carey Griffel. And today, I thought we'd get into the topic of Genesis in the Dead Sea Scrolls, because there's some really interesting things that we can see there in the oldest manuscripts that we have of the Book of Genesis.
[00:00:29] And not only the manuscripts of Genesis, but also manuscripts that touch on the same things that Genesis touches on. By looking at the amazing material we have in these scrolls, We can say a lot about what at least one group of people were thinking about the book of Genesis and maybe how they were using it as part of their ideological worldview.
[00:00:53] But not only that, I also want to expand the discussion To talk about different ways and different times of interpretation for those of us who are getting into contextual studies and biblical theology and things like that, we have to square these ideas of what we're learning about the original context of the compiling of the scripture and how they understood that with the fact that that's really not the kind of interpretive lenses that we see throughout time.
[00:01:24] I want to present an idea of how to look at that, that is going to hopefully, maybe, expand the way that we can see different interpretations through time. And how those don't have to be threats to what we see in Scripture and how we want to be looking at it.
[00:01:43] This will play off a tiny bit from what Mike Chu and I were talking about last week with interpretive theories. Not that I'm really going to be going explicitly into more interpretive theories and models like that, but our interpretive models are really kind of modern constructions, and if we go into the history of interpretation, and we see how people are actually doing it at real periods of time, it kind of knocks against a lot of those theories, especially the more stringent ones like the dictation model.
[00:02:18] Like, if the dictation model is what happened, then how do we explain the way that people understood scripture in the time during the Dead Sea Scrolls, which was before and around the time of Jesus? And how do we explain how the early church fathers used scripture? For those who aren't aware, many of the early church fathers were looking at scripture, through a very, very allegorical method, right? They were looking at the Old Testament and seeing Christ in many places that people in the Old Testament wouldn't have been seeing him. So they had these allegorical Christological lenses on, and we're like, well, that's not a literal interpretation. And that's not the way that the original people would have understood it.
[00:03:07] Alright, so that's kind of where we're going to be tracking in this episode, and I don't know if I'm going to be able to get everything in that I want to say today into this episode. There's a lot of data I want to get into regarding the text of Genesis in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the associated texts, but I also want to bring out this idea that is, I think, very related to all of that, as far as how people are using the text through time in real ways.
[00:03:36] So, with that framework in mind, I think I've kind of opened up the floodgates of a whole bunch of episodes that we could really get into a lot of the nitty gritty bits and pieces of this. So, it's going to be a bit of a rolling ride, but I hope you stay with me here because I think this will help us wrestle with what to do with the fact that ancient interpretations weren't all the same.
[00:03:59] And that's actually okay. It really is. I know, that sounds crazy. Surely the original interpretation of Genesis 6 4 is the only correct one and everyone else is wrong. Well, yeah, if we're gonna land on one, we should use all of the information we have and give the most weight to the original intent.
[00:04:20] But two things here. Number one, people didn't always have all of the information. And number two, even when they did, there may have been reasons why they didn't use it. And so interpretations are really as based in context as the original writing was based in a context. All of this kind of hinges on the same difficulties that we have with interpretation. And we'll get more into that as we get into the center of the content later. But okay, I know I just mentioned Genesis 6, but just so you're not disappointed, we're not going to be getting into that particular today. We will be focusing on the creation account. But eventually, probably not in this episode, we'll get into some really fascinating things about Noah.
[00:05:10] It turns out that once you start getting into the Dead Sea Scrolls and things, there's a lot to say about them. But before we get into the nitty gritty discussion here, I want to lay out some terms and information, because not everyone listening will know what I'm talking about. Probably most of you have heard of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were manuscripts of the Old Testament and other works that were found starting in about 1947 or so in several caves near the, you guessed it, the Dead Sea.
[00:05:43] These can be pretty reliably dated between about 250 BC to shortly after the time of Jesus. They don't go past the first century. I think the major idea is that these jars of manuscripts were hidden in the caves, probably during the time of the Jewish revolt that ended in the destruction of the temple in 70 AD. We're not going to get into too much of the history here, but it's likely that the caves that they were found in were not the caves that they would have always been kept in during their primary use, but that they were literally hidden to keep them protected because of the political upheaval.
[00:06:24] So in this episode, I want to kind of disambiguate. On the one hand, I'm going to be talking about community in a broad sense, like any type of community that is closely knit, that has some sort of identifying factors together.
[00:06:38] But I'm also going to be talking about quote unquote the community, which is referring to the group that had the scrolls. Though, I will also say that the term Dead Sea Scrolls really encompasses something a bit broader than this. Most of the documents were probably used by a particular group with particular ideas. A common word for this community is Yahad, which literally means community. This would be the Hebrew term that they used internally in texts that refer to themselves. So that's why we're going to be using this term as well.
[00:07:16] I will also be talking about Qumran, and if you're not familiar with Qumran, it is a Jewish settlement that is close to the caves, and it's presumed by many to be where the community lived. But the caves are a bit spread out from there, and, as I said, not all of the Dead Sea Scrolls necessarily came from the same group. But it's not uncommon to talk about the group at Qumran as the central figure or player here.
[00:07:46] Now, as far as who they were, there are various theories, one of the most popular being that they were a group of Essenes. And, of course, the New Testament mentions this group. There are other theories out there, but we won't be getting into those today. But a final term we do need to be familiar with is the term sectarian. A Jewish sectarian group is a group which has chosen particular boundaries to distinguish it from other groups.
[00:08:15] And in the case of Qumran, they have chosen to live separately from other Jewish groups and from other people. Now, Christians usually call sectarian groups denominations. the Jewish sectarian groups at the time of Jesus were wide ranging, and as we can see with the community at Qumran, sometimes they had particular settlements and very particular ideas of what it looked like to live out the Mosaic Law.
[00:08:43] Now, as we get into talking about Genesis here, the thing we need to keep in mind is that the context of the people of the Dead Sea Scrolls is later than the context of the final form of the text. However, and whenever that happened, whether Moses wrote Genesis or it happened during the exile, the final form of the text was complete well before the community at the Dead Sea.
[00:09:09] And that means there is distance and difference in how the text was used and understood, and we're going to be talking about that. I've said some things about that before that we will touch on again, particularly in relation to other texts that are similar to Genesis, such as the book of Jubilees. They are no longer in the context of Babylon, and so they're no longer understanding the texts in the same way.
[00:09:35] But that's interesting, talking about how context and understanding can change over time. That's not something everyone is comfortable with. Like I was talking with Mike Chu last week about interpretation, And I feel like an implied idea with a lot of these models is that there can't be different interpretations. Or, we could even say different uses of the text over time. Because, well, how does God communicate truth if that's the case? Surely God's truth doesn't change, does it?
[00:10:10] Well, no, it doesn't. But if we consider the fact that the text is meant to serve the needs of the community and I'm talking about the broader community here well, the needs of the community and its immediate context, those do change, don't they? Now, again, we've got to back up here to be clear, because I'm not saying that these are things that a community decides for itself. That a group can just march out on its own, and make its own meaning, and its own purpose, and whatever else. That's not what I'm saying. Rather, I'd say that God is the one who is doing things, and the people are carried along in that. not in a way where people have no choice, but that they're often trying to figure things out as to how they fit in with what God is doing. And Scripture is the tool to do that, but Scripture must be interpreted for it to be useful in the current situation.
[00:11:08] I'm just talking about what we literally see in the Old Testament, in the New Testament, in early church history. Different people at different times had different things that they were dealing with. The people in Egypt versus the people in Canaan, versus the people of the monarchy, versus the divided monarchy, versus the people in the exile, versus the people who are trying to figure out what to do with Greek culture, versus the early church who were in a whole new mishmash of different contexts. And of course, we have the course of history all the way up to today.
[00:11:45] For each of those situations, we might say that the people had similar issues and problems, just as we have similar things going on today. people don't change fundamentally. The nature of our enemy and the ways that we deal with it change on a superficial level, but in large part, they're still the same. So the truth remains.
[00:12:08] So, why then do I say that the people who preserved the Dead Sea Scrolls were not in the same context as the people who had previously received the final form of the Book of Genesis? why am I suggesting there's a disconnect?
[00:12:24] Well, again, let's say we could put ourselves into the shoes of Moses or taking off his shoes as the case may be. And he's in a context of oppression of the people. And he was tasked with delivering them and getting them to the Promised Land, where they would then be tempted by the people --and the gods--of the Canaanites. They would be tempted to become like the Canaanites.
[00:12:49] Now, this is almost a tangent, but I feel like this is kind of almost the core of what I'm talking about here. The concern about becoming like the Canaanites, did you notice? That seems to have not been a problem so much in the time of Egypt.
[00:13:07] I mean, there were rebellious gods in both constructs. But notice that somehow, between the time of Joseph and the time of Moses, the people managed to retain their identity. We're not given any real details on how that happened. Why was the problem in Egypt not one of intermixing and losing cohesion? But suddenly, with the exposure to the Canaanites, this became a real threat.
[00:13:38] And some of you are going to jump to the Divine Council worldview perspective and try and view it from that. And yes, the deities were connected to the people of the land. And the admonition to not mix with the people of the land was for the fact that when they mix, they will also start worshipping false gods. It wasn't a racial, ethnic, genealogical thing. It was a worship thing. But have we asked why that didn't happen in Egypt? The people in Egypt weren't worshipping Egyptian gods, it seems.
[00:14:14] I'm not pretending to give a full answer here, but it's interesting. I know that some people would say that it could have something to do with ethnic or linguistic people groups. Maybe the Egyptians didn't particularly care for Semitic people. But back in the day, ethnicity wasn't how it's seen today. and by all accounts that I've seen, Egypt had a very diverse population from our perspective. What we now call religion played a big part in separating people, of course. And by religion, I primarily mean the cultural, linguistic, and worship aspects of the people.
[00:14:54] But I'm just saying it's very intriguing that the immediate problem in Egypt was slavery, and the immediate problem in Canaan was intermixing. Both of those involve the gods, but they are still different problems.
[00:15:12] The hint that we do get in the Book of Exodus is that there's oppression going on in Egypt, right? The Canaanite threat in the land wasn't about the oppression of the people. So, whatever that says about the differences there, it's like, well, if you're being oppressed by a group, you're not gonna be tempted to willingly worship the gods of your oppressors, are you? They might try to force you to, but well, good luck with that, right?
[00:15:40] That right there might be a better answer, really, than the ethnic reason. if the Egyptian gods were being forced upon the Israelites, and we don't really know if that was the case, if that was how they worked, but human nature being what it is, if that was the situation, that could cause the Israelites to retain their alternate identity as a form of resistance.
[00:16:05] But in Canaan, the Canaanites weren't oppressors. They were neighbors, or at least potential neighbors. So it was more like the Canaanite worship would be something alluring, perhaps. It's just an interesting distinction. We see hints in the book of Genesis that the Israelites would be the ones who would turn oppressors eventually. The theme of that stares us in the face in the story with Hagar in Genesis. And that's not unfamiliar historical territory either as we read the Old Testament. Like, the potential problem with having a king is that lure of power and not ruling justly.
[00:16:44] and then there's another thing, that once you start getting generational separation between events in history, well, context is lost. So once the people were out of Egypt, the Egyptian context meant less, except for the narrative of the exodus. Now, that's not to say that we don't have echoes of the influence of Egypt all throughout the Old Testament. But once outside Egypt, much of that intimate understanding of Egyptian culture and whatever else is going to dissipate in favor of what they're experiencing with their new Canaanite neighbors. And that will feel all the more enticing, perhaps.
[00:17:25] Okay. And then you have the exile and it's no longer the Canaanites who are the direct influences, but it's Assyria or Babylon who are again, of course, oppressors. But the situation was still very similar to the one in the land in some ways between the problem of Canaanites and the problem of foreign domination because the stress on remaining the pure people of God is still there. And so the task of the prophets was to keep or bring people into covenant faithfulness to Yahweh versus worshiping the other gods, including worshiping them in a syncratic way, which would be like worshipping Yahweh and the other gods simultaneously, which isn't any better than only worshipping the other gods.
[00:18:16] This is the emphasis on the jealousy of Yahweh. It's not referring to a petty human emotion, but drawing on the distinctiveness of Yahweh and stressing that He is the one who saves. If you rely on all of the gods to save you, well, who knows what's gonna happen. If you listen to my episode on the Mesopotamian flood stories, you can see that other ancient Near Eastern deities have no problem with simultaneous worship. But Yahweh is different.
[00:18:46] But at any rate, we get to the close of the time of the physical exile, and the people are allowed back into the land, and lo and behold, between this time and the time of Jesus, turning to false gods is no longer the biggest issue.
[00:19:04] It's like They've learned their lesson. Okay, we get it. We've now formed ourselves into a very strong identity that is centered around Yahweh and the Torah. So, because of this, you could definitely say the idea of the purity of the people is still the big focus.
[00:19:24] That's why we have the community at Qumran, in fact. It was a matter of identity formation and separation because of that. It was an us versus them. They believed that the temple worship in Jerusalem had broken down. The priests in Jerusalem weren't doing things the right way. In particular, they weren't using the correct festival and worship calendar. And so, there was this group that broke off and decided to do things right, since those guys in Jerusalem obviously weren't going to get things done. And things had to be done right in order to usher in the Messianic Age.
[00:20:05] The idea of deliverance was no longer really about national oppressors and the gods of the nations, or at least, it wasn't primarily or only that.
[00:20:17] Again, we can always nuance this. It depends on the particular group. There were those who were adamantly against the rule of the Romans at the time of Jesus, Or before that, who were against the Greeks, or the Persians, or whoever was the current threat. Just like with the Exodus and the Exile, the idea of deliverance was paramount. But the threat was more nebulous or changeable.
[00:20:42] So I'm not trying to wash out the distinctions between the groups here, but I think there's a broader picture to be seen that we don't often see. If you've been checking out my Pilgrims in a Holy Land segments on the YouTube channel Faith Unaltered, we're getting into the context of the Jews of the time of Jesus so that we can understand how the early church did what it did and why.
[00:21:07] And we've been talking about how there was no one group or single idea for things. As Christians, we assume that they were all waiting on the Messiah, and even that is really not entirely the case. Some were, some had particular ideas of what that looked like, and some were purposefully trying to do things to usher in that messianic age.
[00:21:30] But the focus was kind of less on the Messiah and more on the community, really, I think, bringing the promises made to Israel to fruition. And that had quite a bit to do with who Israel was. Like, who could be included in the nation of Israel? Who made the cut? Were they just those who descended from Jacob? Or did it matter what you practiced?
[00:21:57] That was a big question, and you can see how it's quite related to previous eras, really. The concern of going into the land, the concern of keeping identity when outside the land. But the outside threat in each case is a bit different everywhere. And actually, by the time of Jesus, the outside threats weren't even all outside. The disputes between Jewish groups were very real. And similar to disputes today, there sometimes were questions of who is saved and who is not.
[00:22:31] So that's why the people at Qumran were in the desert doing their thing. They believed very firmly in ensuring that worship was done just right according to the heavenly calendar. They also held to an idea that the nations as a whole would be brought into submission, but their primary concern wasn't, like, the deliverance from slavery or exile, but rather they were convinced that the Golden Age hadn't yet arrived because they weren't doing the right things.
[00:23:01] Now, we click our tongues and say, Oh, those silly legalists! And to some degree, okay, yeah, but if you were in their shoes prior to Jesus, what would you think? Hey, we're back in the land, but the promises aren't fulfilled. Before the Romans came in, we even ruled the land ourselves for about a hundred years and that didn't last.
[00:23:29] The idea here would be the repentance wasn't over and they were still under judgment. So, okay, let's repent more then.
[00:23:39] Paul, on the other hand, in the book of Romans, comes and says, you guys didn't get it. You can't repent in order to become righteous. You have to be made righteous in Christ, and then you'll be able to live righteously.
[00:23:52] So anyway, part of what I'm saying is that different cultural influences and political situations are going to change the needs of the community and how they're working those things out. The situation in Egypt was, they were surrounded by Egyptian gods, and Yahweh God judged those gods via the signs and wonders that got the people out of Egypt. And those gods were a threat via the oppression of the people. Now, the threat in Canaan seems to have been a melding together of cultural influence and false gods. Then after that, the threat in exile was still false gods, but more specifically than that, it was learning to be faithful to Yahweh, and forming an identity that centered on Yahweh.
[00:24:41] And, again, to a large degree, the Exile did exactly that. They learned it so well that they started to think that the problem was that they weren't doing things right. The people were no longer drawn by false deities. Have you noticed that? In the Old Testament, the people were always after other gods. And in the New Testament, it's like, nope, no longer the problem.
[00:25:07] I've said before that I think this is a likely reason we don't see as big a focus on the Divine Council worldview in New Testament scholarship as we see it in Old Testament scholarship. It's not that things have changed in the Unseen Realm, or that the problem has gone away, but having gone through the suffering, and we might say metaphorical death of the Exile, there is a definite change in the people. In a large sense, they have repented, they have turned from false gods to Yahweh. But that wasn't enough, because they'd missed the boat again, but in a different way.
[00:25:47] You could make a case that the looming problem from Genesis through to the New Testament has always been one of identity, though. Who do you follow? Because the one you follow is the one who is going to shape you. But, we can't miss the obvious, that the way you follow, and the expectations you have in that, are going to matter as well.
[00:26:11] Anyway, to me, that's the kind of stuff I think we should have in our minds as we study the Dead Sea Scrolls and the influence and use of biblical texts there, as well as during other time periods. In every case, the text would be used in the practice of helping the people understand who they were and why that mattered. It's always a way to measure and define. What should it look like to be the people that they were?
[00:26:41] Yahweh is the one who defeated Pharaoh and the other gods of Egypt. He is the one who deserved their worship in the promised land, and when he was rejected, the land itself ejected the people out. When they resist the temptation of melting into the nations around them, including worshiping other gods, then they do return to the land.
[00:27:03] But things still aren't quite right. All the promises aren't yet fulfilled. And so then, the infighting begins. Who gets the blame for this not yet being perfect? Who is right with God, and who isn't? What is the future of Israel? Who is Israel? If coming back into the land, and no longer worshiping false gods, and even ruling over the land themselves as they had managed to for about a hundred years, If all of that wasn't enough, then what is?
[00:27:38] Now, notice I haven't really mentioned much about the Book of Genesis. I've basically been starting with the Exodus as the formative event, because I do think that is the paradigm through which they'd be reading everything. When you look at the history from Exodus onwards, it moves from high points to low points to a hopeful point. And I think that hope does stem from the book of Genesis, in the stories of the patriarchs and the formation of the early nation of Israel, who wasn't even a nation yet.
[00:28:11] Now, it's not that Genesis chapters 12 through 50 don't have threats, but the threats they have are like the seeds or the prototypes of the threats that they face later. And, you know, it's pretty clear how chapters 12 through 50 fit into the story of Israel. And I think a lot of times, we Christians like focusing on those first 11 chapters so much, because, hey, look, those aren't just about a single esoteric nation in the middle of the Levant!
[00:28:42] As maybe you can draw out, as I've been talking about the situation leading up to Jesus, the people weren't necessarily all that concerned about the world as we see it. We don't see a whole lot of evangelistic Jewish groups, do we? Now, that's not to say that they didn't think about the world in the form of the nations or the Gentiles.
[00:29:07] Depending on who you asked, the idea there might be that, sure, Israel was supposed to be a draw or a blessing to the nations, or that Israel was to subject the nations in a kind of karma situation, or that Israel really didn't have much to do with the nations at all.
[00:29:27] And we wonder, how could they think that? Don't they read their own scriptures where Genesis says that all nations will be blessed in Abraham? Well, don't forget we can have different interpretations of what that means, and just like we like to read certain scriptures and skip others, surely they had that same tendency. And we'll see some really interesting ways in which that actually played out in the Dead Sea Scrolls.
[00:29:55] Anyway, my point is, the people at Qumran were most certainly reading Genesis, including the creation story, with a mind not towards the world in the way that we're thinking about it, as if they were looking to be a light to the nations, but rather they were reading Genesis primarily as a part of their own personal identity formation.
[00:30:20] Now, I could be wrong, but I really don't think they were reading those texts and thinking, hey, look, those poor Babylonians or Romans are the creation of God, too. I mean, maybe some of that was in there for them, but I think for them, just as much as the story of Abraham or Jacob, the creation story was about who they were as a people. It was their identity, and no one else's really, that mattered. And why should the identity of anyone else matter? Because they weren't defining themselves by the creator of the universe, so, oh well, too bad for them.
[00:30:58] Whether the way the Qumran community were reading it was radically different from the way that other Jews of the time read it, to a large degree, we don't know, aside from comparing what different people wrote. But even then, different people had different purposes and concerns in writing.
[00:31:15] One of the great things about the Dead Sea Scrolls is not just the biblical text and its preservation, but the other texts as well. Those tell us quite a bit as far as the interpretive lenses of the people, just like we can say the same about the Greek Septuagint, or the Aramaic Targums, or commentary from the early church fathers or the later rabbis.
[00:31:39] During all of these different times and historical situations, we have different people taking the same text and using it as part of the way they define themselves. And yet, they are different groups with different boundaries. For us students of biblical theology, that actually makes it hard for us today to read and understand the Bible in its original context, because we could ask, which historical context? There are many. Because that's what you get when you have a book of books that was written over a span of a thousand years.
[00:32:15] But this is the task of biblical theology, in my mind, to try to look into these times and see what we see and admit it's not all cohesive. And that's okay. The understanding of the time of Moses would not be exactly the same as the understanding during the exile, Or at Qumran, or in Jerusalem at the time of Jesus. And so our tendency to kind of compress it all and say, what is the single meaning? It might be a little bit misguided.
[00:32:48] Now here is my rather bold proposition for you. What I think is good news in all of that is that it then becomes unnecessary for us to have to pick a context and say, that is the single meaning of a passage.
[00:33:07] We want there to be a single authorial meaning because we're taught various things about that today. But the idea of one single meaning for scripture then would force us to have to choose. Again, going back to one of our favorite passages, is the meaning of Genesis 6 what they'd say about it in Babylon, or is it what some of the early church fathers say?
[00:33:30] If we go with a more ancient understanding, what do we do with the idea that the early church fathers are wrong? Can we only choose a literal meaning, or is an allegorical meaning also legitimate? These are the questions we face today.
[00:33:48] An example that we might look at is the passage of Peter and the Rock, right? Many of you know what I'm referring to here, Jesus and Peter at Caesarea Philippi, and Jesus says to Peter, On this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
[00:34:09] Well, what we know about that now is that quite likely they were in a situation that had geographical significance. The tradition was that this was Mount Hermon from Genesis 6, and this had an actual portal into hell, we might say, a portal into the underworld, a shrine to the god Pan, who could also be seen as Satan. And so knowing that geographical information, we can look at that and say, Well, there's this broader idea that Jesus is reaching into when he's talking to Peter.
[00:34:46] He isn't just talking directly to Peter, but he's talking about something broader than that. He was referring to a wider scope of ideas than the early church fathers had any idea of later down the line. They didn't have that geographical and historical context in their heads. So, we're thinking, yeah, Mount Hermon and Jesus preaching against the Watchers and the powers of darkness.
[00:35:12] The early church fathers were thinking, okay, so Peter is the rock then. like, that's really the context they had because that's how it reads if you don't know the geographical and historical context. So, were they just flat out wrong? Or, maybe we're trying to be too pedantic and know it all in saying that from our high horse of having access to more information, we know the true way to look at this passage, and they didn't.
[00:35:42] Now, if in the end, we allow each of these contexts to speak for themselves within their own time, Then we can see a broader idea. We can look at the similar principles that are at work in each of these times, in each of these interpretive contexts, and that, in turn, I believe, can help illuminate our own applicable meaning.
[00:36:05] Again, it's not that we get to pick and choose. This isn't some sort of interpretive buffet. You like that one, and I like this one over here. And it's not that context doesn't matter. But the main point is that scripture is always interpreted in relation to the revelation of God in history, not in relation to particular historical details, if that makes sense.
[00:36:31] So sometimes the details get a little bit fuzzy to us, but so long as we're interpreting it In relation to the revelation of God in history, as far as who he is, his characteristics, his covenantal faithfulness, and all of those things, those are the core of what matters to our interpretation.
[00:36:52] And it's true that all the interpretations that happen after the compilation of the text are, by definition, later than the original context. So, there must have been that original meaning that the human authors at the time understood. And again, we should give that a great amount of weight if we happen to have an idea of what that is. But the fact remains, we do see adjustments in knowledge and understanding even by the time of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Jesus, let alone by the time of the early Church Fathers.
[00:37:26] So let's have a look at the Dead Sea Scroll texts themselves, shall we? I mean, we can't look at them because this is an audio podcast and I don't have them here in my basement, but let's compare that to how we view Genesis 1 through 11 in particular. And I don't really have to introduce the way that we typically read the creation story and the primeval history, as usually saying, hey, look, we're God's people too.
[00:37:55] That tends to be our lens. And again, I'm not saying it's wrong, but are we sure we aren't importing some assumptions here while we're ignoring other embedded concepts? I mean to say that we often read this as "pre Israel" history, right? Rather than a history that points to and illuminates Israel. " Oh, yes, of course it includes Israel, because Israel is, after all, part of the world."
[00:38:23] We want it to be about more than Israel, because the sad fact is, we don't see ourselves as part of Israel. In spite of the fact that we have that beautiful metaphor from the New Testament about the trunk and the branches and being grafted in, and all of that, that whole metaphor should make it clear that Israel's history is our history. But we so often keep this distance and this disconnect. We want Genesis 1 to 11 to be about the world, precisely because we don't think we are Israel. But really, it's not disconnected, and we should see this intimate flow and have that be our focus as really that does comport with the focus of the whole rest of Scripture.
[00:39:09] All right, so I knew that all of the setup to this conversation about the actual texts from the Dead Sea Scrolls would probably take the abundance of the episode. So that's why I'm going to promise that we will be talking about the Dead Sea Scrolls more in the future, because there is really interesting detail that we can draw out from these particular texts.
[00:39:30] But for the remaining of today, I will be talking about these texts from the Dead Sea Scrolls. And introducing them to you, giving you an idea of what they are and what they include as far as particularly the creation story.
[00:39:45] Alright, so the first thing of note is to know that not every book of the Old Testament is equally represented in the Dead Sea Scrolls. One of the things that we can surmise from that is what they found to be important. Now, we don't have a complete copy of Genesis. But then most texts are not complete. We do have fragments of about 19 or 20 copies from Five of the Caves, which is quite a few copies.
[00:40:17] The majority of the fragments line up exceptionally well with what is known as the Masoretic Text, which is our current Hebrew majority text. The copies of the Masoretic text We have date from about a thousand years ago. So they're quite a bit later than the Dead Sea Scrolls. There are a few spelling differences, which is to be expected because spelling does change over time And there are a few variants that actually match up better with the Greek Septuagint, which suggests that the Septuagint comes from a particular Hebrew manuscript that actually differs from the Masoretic text.
[00:40:59] For those who aren't into textual criticism, that might not make much sense to you. But in short, it means that at the time of Jesus, there were multiple Hebrew manuscript traditions. Not just a single version. And these different versions were preserved by the same group of people in the Dead Sea Scrolls. So, they clearly existed alongside one another.
[00:41:24] That is a point against the dictation model of inspiration. Because remember that these Dead Sea Scrolls manuscripts are the earliest ones that we have. They are closest in time to what the original texts would have been. Remember last week, we talked a little bit about the original autographs, which were either the original manuscripts that the first author put his pen to, or would at least be the original manuscripts that existed in its final form that was going to be transmitted by scribal copy.
[00:42:00] so, with the oldest manuscripts that we have, there are multiple versions. now they're not wildly different, mind you, for the most part. Some of them have massive sections missing or whatnot. But it shows that the Jews of the first century weren't concerned with only dealing with one and only one version.
[00:42:21] The oldest manuscript is dated from 250 to 150 B. C., and it's written in Paleo Hebrew, which is an older version of the script, and it contains Genesis 6, verses 13 through 21. So that passage starts at the warning that God gives to Moses about the flood, and talks about the building of the ark, and goes on from there.
[00:42:46] I'll read it in the NASB version, because it's just pretty neat that this is our oldest bit of Genesis that we have. It says, quote, Then God said to Noah, The end of all flesh has come before me, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. And behold, I am about to destroy them with the earth. Make for yourself an Ark of Gopherwood. You shall make the ark with rooms, and shall cover it inside and out with pitch. This is how you shall make it. The length of the ark, 300 cubits. Its breadth, 50 cubits. And its height, 30 cubits. You shall make a window for the ark, and finish it to a cubit from the top, and set the door of the ark in the side of it. You shall make it with lower, second, and third decks. behold I, even I, am bringing the flood of water upon the earth, to destroy all flesh in which is the breath of life, from under heaven. Everything that is on the earth shall perish, but I will establish my covenant with you, and you shall enter the ark, you and your sons and your wife, and your sons wives with you. And of every living thing of all flesh, you shall bring two of every kind into the ark to keep them alive with you. They shall be male and female, of the birds after their kind, and of the animals after their kind, of every creeping thing of the ground after its kind. Two of every kind will come to you to keep them alive. As for you, take for yourself some of all food which is edible, and gather it to yourself, and it shall be for food for you and for them. End quote.
[00:44:31] It is so interesting to me that that's our oldest text from Genesis. Now, I don't want to make too much out of that. It's just an accident of history, we might say. I bet there are people out there that would say there was some secret that God is trying to tell us because this particular fragment happened to be preserved longest. I don't think that's the case. I think all Scripture matters. But it is just interesting.
[00:44:58] So, the creation account is found in six of the copies. Because they're fragmentary, we can't say that only 6 out of the 20 copies had the creation account. It's just that this is what we've ended up with. There isn't much to say about the differences in the manuscripts, unless you want to get into the intimate details of the Masoretic text, versus the Septuagint and things like that, which is probably a bit out of bounds for our purposes here.
[00:45:26] But here's a very small something that may or may not be interesting to you. Now, I suppose I should say something about how the manuscripts are designated, because they were found in 11 different caves around the area of Qumran. when you see a Dead Sea Scroll that has the designation of Q in it, then it's referencing these 11 caves that are around Qumran. So there's a number that comes before that Q. That number is referring to the cave that the manuscript came from. And then there's a designation that comes after the Q. If it's a biblical manuscript, it'll give the name of the biblical book and some sort of identifying factor after that as well, because usually we have multiple copies.
[00:46:14] So here I am referencing a text that is called 4Q Genesis G. The 4 references that it's from Cave 4, which probably had the most manuscripts of all of the caves. Again, the Q references it's a Qumran cave. Genesis means it's from the Book of Genesis, and then we have the designation of a G after that, and that's because we have multiple copies of Genesis from the caves.
[00:46:45] So 4QGenesisG means it's from Cave 4 at Qumran. It's the Book of Genesis. And G means that it's the seventh copy of Genesis that they found. This particular copy uses a slightly different term to refer to the naming of the light in verse 5. The Masoretic text reads, Then God called the light day. And it uses the same word it uses for day throughout the rest of the chapter, referring to, you know, one day, the second day, and so on.
[00:47:21] But this variant text says, Then God called the light daytime. So it makes this use of the word there to be slightly different than the rest of the uses of the word day. I don't know if that has any real theological meaning to suggest a period of daytime, versus maybe the evening morning references are a 24 hour period. I don't know. It's a pretty small point in any case and may even have just been a scribal error if it wasn't trying to make a distinctive point. It's these kinds of details that scholars look at very closely when they're trying to determine how a text was understood.
[00:48:03] Another interesting artifact of studying the Dead Sea Scrolls is not just to see how carefully preserved our manuscripts through time have been, but also to see that even though the scribes were very concerned about preserving valuable space on the parchment, they also had methods for separating the text into sections.
[00:48:25] They had minor and major divisions of sections, where they would leave small or large spaces. A minor division would just be a space in the middle of the line, and a major division would leave the rest of the line, or the beginning of the next line, totally blank. In the Dead Sea Scrolls, major divisions were all left between the days of creation.
[00:48:47] And interestingly, in Day 3, in one of the manuscripts, there is a minor division, separating the creative acts into two parts. Sadly, it doesn't preserve Day 6's division to know if it does the same thing. But I'd say chances are that it does, and so this seems to be at least some sort of defense that the way they structure the section is the way that I've presented it, with days 1 and day 4, days 2 and 5, and days 3 and 6 connected.
[00:49:20] Now, granted, we're kind of supposing some information here, so, again, it's not a slam dunk, but it's interesting. Now, not every scroll had the same divisions, copied in the same way. In our oldest Masoretic text copies we have, which have similar section breaks, some of these divisions in the Old Testament parallel exactly what we have in the Dead Sea Scrolls.
[00:49:45] But there are some variants and there are also differences in section breaks within the various Dead Sea Scroll manuscripts So we can't know if these sections were encoded into the very first manuscripts or how much scribal Flexibility there may have been.
[00:50:02] But the big question is why does that matter? What is the point? What does this matter to us? Now, we're getting a little bit nerdy here, but why this matters can speak to how we view the first verses of Genesis as to whether there is a literary break there or not. In other words, what creative acts happened on day one?
[00:50:27] In the beginning, God made the heavens and the earth. Is that an act of creation on day one? Or is verse 1 an introductory heading that summarizes the whole account? If Day 1 doesn't begin in Verse 1, but really begins in Verse 2 or 3, then that means Verse 1 isn't an explicit act of creation.
[00:50:53] We have two copies that preserve the opening verses. And in both, the first major section division is after verse 5, so this seems to suggest that all five verses are the creative acts of Day 1.
[00:51:10] But there are, of course, other explanations for why there might not be a break behind a heading or a summary statement, too. For one thing, there isn't a whole lot of text there, and it's very rare that they'd give a break if there wasn't much text to begin with. They didn't seem to be given to putting titles on works in the way that we do, at least at the first of the manuscript in this way so even if it is a kind of a title, maybe they didn't see the need to set it apart.
[00:51:39] But the point is, they could have, and they didn't. Again, not a slam dunk for the idea of all five of those verses being part of day one, but it is suggestive in any case. So, that's a point in the quiver of those who want to argue for Creation ex Nihilo in Genesis 1.
[00:51:59] Another reason why it matters to look at the manuscripts closely and see these tiny details is that it shows that the scribes can potentially function to guide interpretation. We think of scribes as slavishly copying the single original. And, that's often kind of the vision we should have here, because they were very exact, very precise, and very desirous of preserving the text.
[00:52:26] But if a group had reason to adjust a text in small ways, it seems like they could. They could change a word here or there. They could break the text up in a slightly different way. They could even leave out or put in whole sections, potentially, as we do see in other texts. And when a text is reworked, or the contents of it is repurposed in a different kind of text, that can help us explain why a group did certain things or focused on particular things,
[00:52:58] Now, we don't really have any time to get into those other manuscripts here today. That's going to be for next time. We're going to be digging into these other texts that relate to the creation text in Genesis and we're going to see what kind of light those texts shine on the biblical text.
[00:53:17] Some of these non biblical texts are things that we're already familiar with, or many of us might be familiar with. You know, we have the book of 1st Enoch that tells a lot about things from the perspective of Genesis. We have the book of Jubilees, which is kind of a reworking or a rewriting of what's going on in Genesis. And that functions as a great bit of commentary on how they were seeing the creation account and other things in both Genesis as well as Exodus.
[00:53:50] But beyond those texts, there are other texts that are also preserved in the Dead Sea Scrolls. And these are really, really fascinating. They're going to shed light only on this portion of Judaism in this context. We can't really say that everyone was thinking the same way or parsing things in the same kind of way that the people at Qumran were thinking of things.
[00:54:14] But also, some of those texts are clearly not just sectarian community texts from Qumran, so they indicate a wider availability to the rest of Jewish groups. And also, as we're on the subject of Dead Sea Scrolls and ancient texts, We will probably be getting a little bit more into other parallel texts, such as the Targums and the Septuagint and the Samaritan Pentateuch and all of those kinds of things that parallel what we have in our Masoretic texts and in our English Bibles, which some of our English Bibles are now starting to incorporate some of the information from the Dead Sea Scrolls and seeing that, hey, The people who translated the text into the Greek, they weren't just necessarily making things up out of whole cloth. they seem to have had an older Hebrew manuscript that they were working from that just varied a little bit from the Hebrew manuscript that the Masoretic text is based on.
[00:55:18] And again, I know that for many of us, a lot of this is detail that We're just like, why does this matter? I don't understand what it has to do with my faith and what it has to do with how I can read my Bible. And are you saying that all of these different manuscripts should make me question the reliability of my Bible? And look, I'm not saying any of that. And what I want to do in each of these episodes that we talk about textual criticism stuff, I do want to make sure we bring it back into the conversation of why does this matter for our interpretation? How does this illuminate the way that I can read my scriptures? And the way that we see scripture being interpreted historically. And so that was what I'm trying to bring out to you today in this episode in particular.
[00:56:10] Just to kind of draw a little bit more of that out again, I am really aware that for many of us, we get really excited about studying the Bible in context. But there's still plenty of people out there who want to put a little bit of brakes on to that. And I think that is understandable. Because what you see when you study the Bible in context is frankly that the original context had a lot of meaning to it that was lost or misinterpreted or just whatever. Over time, people didn't have the same type of interpretive reading of these texts.
[00:56:52] And I can see that we have this concern of, well you're saying that interpretations from the original writing until now, they're all wrong, and What, what are we supposed to do with that?
[00:57:05] I see how that can freak people out, and I see how, for some people, that can be kind of a dangerous line of thought, going to the direction of, oh, you know, our texts and our interpretations and our cultural and historical interpretations inside the church itself Those are wrong?
[00:57:26] What do we do with that? The church is supposed to be the bulwark of faith, right? We're supposed to be the pillar of truth. And if you don't believe me, we can turn to 1 Timothy 3. 15 where it says, but in case I am delayed, I write so that you will know how one ought to conduct himself in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and support of the truth.
[00:57:56] So it's not just this text, but it's the community. The church there is talking about the people, the communal aspect of the church, meeting together in the body of Christ helps to support the truth. It's the church of the living God that is the pillar and support of the truth.
[00:58:18] And so we're like, if we have a church that has all of these different historical interpretations, they can't all be correct in, you know, this one single idea of the text. So that means that Well, the church hasn't been the pillar and support of the truth, right?
[00:58:38] Yeah, that's a scary thought, but you know, that's not really what I'm saying when I'm talking about and suggesting that we learn the Bible in context and saying that that historical context really does matter. Because look, the situation we have today, we are so steeped in a certain kind of learning, aren't we? Like, we're steeped in the study of science and archeology and literature and textual studies and all of these different little bits and pieces of information that people really, in the 1st and 2nd and 3rd century, they were worried about being persecuted. They were worried about building up doctrines so that the person of Jesus could be understood for who he was. They were concerned about understanding who they were in relation to God and what salvation looked like in the church.
[00:59:35] So the idea of archaeology and science, I mean, sure, people were all thinking and doing those kinds of things at the time even, because our science and our understanding of history really does stem from times before Jesus. But when we're talking about what the church was dealing with, they weren't really all that concerned with, okay, which manuscript is the right one? We've got to make sure we have the exact right one. No, they were worried about pastoral issues, about church issues, about doctrine issues. And so the kinds of things that we kind of gravitate toward today and that interest us today are, they're just not the same things that were on the radar of the people at the time.
[01:00:23] You know, you can say the same thing if you go to the Reformation. You can see that what Martin Luther was dealing with was a particular situation, and he had concerns that were wrapped up in that particular situation. So, Reformation theology stems from that context. That doesn't mean that Reformation theology is all entirely wrong or whatever, but you know what? Some of it isn't really going to line up to the same concerns as we have in the Bible. It's gonna get things wrong because it's a different context with different concerns.
[01:01:02] And so I said before, this isn't like a smorgasbord of interpretation where we just get to look throughout all of history and cherry pick the things we like. Not every bit of interpretation is valid. So let me just say that outright right here. But it might have been valid in a certain way in the time that the people were dealing with the certain circumstances, right?
[01:01:28] For instance, if we take Martin Luther's formulation of what justification was and is, then we need to see his formulation in light of his circumstance.
[01:01:40] Now, I think that in the historical context, there were things that he was bringing out in that formulation that really needed to be said and needed to be looked at by the church. That doesn't mean that what he says is what the Bible is saying, though, because, again, different context, different set of situations.
[01:02:03] So we can offer some grace to the perspective and the time period that Martin Luther was working in. And because we are currently blessed with a wider availability of information than Martin Luther had, well, we don't have to come to his conclusion. But that doesn't mean we can't understand why and how that conclusion mattered and made a difference, and it was an important difference at the time.
[01:02:30] Like, the Catholic Church hadn't even formulated a quote unquote doctrine of justification until this situation kind of forced them to have a look at it. The thing I would suggest to you is that it is this back and forth kind of motion through history that really helps us to see what the Bible was saying to begin with, what the message is behind the text. And also, even though some of these formulations may not have been exactly quote unquote correct, that doesn't mean that these ideas and these doctrines can't be pointing people towards God.
[01:03:11] Because, spoiler alert, your theology is wrong. My theology is wrong. We all have things that are wrong in our theology.
[01:03:21] If we try and insist that we've got it all figured out, Well, we're wrong. So assuming that we are wrong means that people in the past have been wrong. And you know what? It's kind of okay that we're wrong. We're doing our best. We're headed forwards. We've got like the central aspect of what we have and what we're dealing with in the character and nature of God, right?
[01:03:46] That's our centralized focus. Our centralized focus shouldn't be this Bible in the way that I have interpreted it. The Bible in the way that this single interpretation brings it out perfectly. And I think if we focus on the fact that Revelation, in its written form, has limitations, it can only do so much.
[01:04:09] The True and real revelation is God himself, and that is why we have the incarnation. That is why we have the indwelling of the spirit. That is the revelation that really hits things in a true manner, in the real sense of that word, true, meaning something that is not at all wrong, right?
[01:04:33] So the Bible can only function as a kind of conduit for some of that. And it absolutely does. It helps us to have some borders and some boundaries of who we are and who God is. That is what is absolutely essential to what we have in the Bible. And I think that's what's clear in the Bible. It's easy to understand in the Bible. And it's these little tiny details and historical aspects and little things in the text that we find are weird that, I mean, those are still things that we need to wrestle with. Those are still things we need to understand. But it doesn't matter that people have gotten it wrong. It's okay that people have gotten it wrong.
[01:05:19] So I hope that kind of clarified what I'm trying to hit at with my main point in this episode today, and kind of our vision and our guideline in what we want to be doing while we're looking at comparative texts alongside the Bible.
[01:05:35] I do think it's important that we give these caveats, and for those of you who are trying to get other people to see the kinds of contextual information that you're starting to see in your studies, maybe if you kind of hit that in this direction of understanding that they have some real concerns, and that those real concerns, they really matter, and they can be addressed in this kind of framework, I think.
[01:06:01] So, I hope that's helpful. I hope you guys enjoyed this episode, and I hope you're looking forward to more textual studies as we look at the Dead Sea Scrolls and some other types of ancient texts, and I hope that you can understand how and why those can really illuminate our faith and our biblical studies.
[01:06:23] At any rate, thanks as always for listening. Thanks for sharing these episodes. I really appreciate you guys who have rated the podcast, who have given me reviews on either Apple Podcasts or Spotify or my website or wherever it is you listen to. Those are really, really helpful. Thank you to those of you who reach out if you think that I can help you with any kinds of questions or concerns. I really do enjoy helping you guys with those kinds of questions and talking to people about just different passages and what they mean and what do we do with these weird things and seeing what I can dig up for you as to what other people have said and what the church has said at large because There is such a body of knowledge and I understand that most people don't have access to a lot of that. So I'm trying to kind of be that kind of bridging gap.
[01:07:17] And I really appreciate those of you who are financially supporting me because I have equipment needs, I have book needs, I have things that I am trying to accomplish with all of this that I hope will be a little bit of a bigger thing than what I'm doing right now.
[01:07:34] So thank you, thank you, thank you to you guys who do support me financially. I really appreciate it. And if you guys have any questions or any ideas for future episodes you'd like to have me address, please let me know. You can reach me on Facebook, you can reach me in my discussion group there, or you can reach me through my website at GenesisMarksTheSpot. com, where you can find blog posts and guest profiles, and also some of my artwork if you're interested in seeing any of that. But for now, I will wrap this up and wish you all a blessed week, and we will see you later.
