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Re: Isaiah errors
With all this talk of Josephus and his inkwells ...
The great Isaiah scroll is chocked full of spelling and grammatical errors and
is written in a such a crude style that it is hard to believe it the work of
sober Jewish scribes. (Much less Josephus himself).
"But no one knows what the grammar or the spelling were really like then since
we have no examples," is the answer I have heard to questions about these
obvious problems -- problems which NEVER seem to be mentioned.
But Josephus, as quoted by the Cross article in "Understanding the Dead Sea
Scrolls," cited the Hebraica veritas dogma in the first century saying, "For
although such long ages have now passed, no one has ventured to add, or to
remove, or to alter a syllable; and it is an instinct with every Jew, from the
day of his birth, to regard them as decrees of God, to abide by them, and if
need be, cheefully to die for them."
So while it is good to wonder about an unstained inkwell, how do we explain
the sloppy state of the Isaiah scroll in light of the words that actually rolled
off Josephus' pen?
David Crowder
El Paso