(January 1, 2013 at 12:20 pm)Minimalist Wrote: The earliest extant "Hebrew" bible dates only to the early 11th century AD.That's not entirely correct. The Masoretic Text is the authoritative preservation of the OT text (despite the fact that God commanded the Levites to do it), and the tradition was to bury the old scrolls and retire them, which is basically what the Masorites did. The DSS contain well in excess of enough material to prove the diligent nature with which the MT was preserved, for instance a complete Isiah scroll.
Quote:If the Dead Sea Scrolls tell us anything it is that these various writings existed as separate documents and had not been "canonized" into a single book as late as 70 AD."If they tell us anything" hey?
They are a great assist and tell us a great number of things. You clearly don't have much idea about what you're talking about here!
PS: They were never a "single book" the Palestinian scripture (aka temple scrolls) was always 22 scrolls, I already said that. When did bounded codices begin to appear anyway? You wouldn't expect codices for the OT until 2nd century or later. And you've already established that the Jews continued to use scrolls and not codices until the 11th century! So why on earth would you expect to find a bound Palestinian OT scriptures at the time of Christ???
The "Eastern Orthodox" theory that the OT scripture was changed in 70AD has been throughly disproved, give that tired argument a rest already would you!
