Manuscripts

Great Isaiah Scroll (1QIsaᵃ)

Era: c. 125 BC
Location: Qumran, Cave 1, near the Dead Sea
Discovered: 1947

A nearly complete copy of the book of Isaiah, copied roughly 1,000 years earlier than any Hebrew Isaiah manuscript we previously had — and substantially identical to the Masoretic text still in use today.

The find

The Great Isaiah Scroll is the best-preserved of the Dead Sea Scrolls, containing all 66 chapters of Isaiah on 17 sheets of parchment. Paleographic and carbon-14 dating place it around 125 BC. When compared with the Masoretic Text (c. AD 1000), the wording is essentially the same — differences are overwhelmingly orthographic, not doctrinal.

Why it matters

It demonstrates that the Old Testament text — including the detailed Messianic prophecies of Isaiah 53 — was transmitted with remarkable fidelity for a thousand years, and that these prophecies of Christ predate His birth by at least a century and a half.

Cross-linked Scripture

Doctrine check

Sources

·Israel Museum: Digital Dead Sea Scrolls
·Tov, E. (2012). Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible, 3rd ed. Fortress Press