A major Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit is going to be in High Point for the next few weeks. Could be worth a day-trip. Meanwhile, reports the High Point Enterprise, a biblical researcher has some searching questions about the dating of the scrolls, and therefore the reliability of the interpretations that we are used to reading about them:
Altman would date the scrolls to the early Middle Ages ? after the 10th century. The scrolls are replete with evidence that they could not possibly have been authored before Christ, according to Altman.
?I was part of a small team of scholars that looked at some strange markings on the scrolls,? he said. ?They turned out to be Chinese. They date A.D.?
Altman noted that photographs taken of the scrolls show Hebrew letters written differently and the word ?Immanuel,? a name for Christ, written differently and smudged in several places.
?The scrolls shouldn’t have any separation of words, sentences and paragraphs,” he said. “They have separation more advanced than the earliest texts we have of Isaiah.?
The texts of the Old Testament and New Testament were not divided into words, sentences, paragraphs, chapters or verses until long after they were first written.
The photos also show Roman numerals, a large “X” circled in the margin of one page, but missing on another with a candy cane symbol appearing instead, Altman said.
The appearance of phrases “in the Talmud” and the “Mother of God” (which is mistranslated and mistranscribed), Altman said, also clearly places the scrolls’ antiquity in serious doubt.
What was that? A candy cane symbol?
