DEAD SEA SCROLLS IN CHARLOTTE: Sunday's Charlotte Observer has two articles on the upcoming Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition at Discovery Place. The first:

From the Dead Sea to Charlotte
PETER ST. ONGE

This tells the story of the discovery of the scrolls in some detail and does a good job of it. My only quibbles are with this:

The scrolls contain previously unknown stories about biblical figures such as Abraham and Noah. Equally wondrous to many are the complete writings of every Old Testament book except Esther -- the only book of the Bible that neither explicitly nor allegorically refers to God. Some books are copied as many as 19 times, and scholars have marveled at the closeness of the texts to modern versions.

"The preservation of the Hebrew text is excellent," says Max Polley, professor emeritus of religion at Davidson College. "It's pretty remarkable that the accuracy is as fine as it is."

Says Flint: "This is very important. There are people who say the Bible has been changed and altered and tampered with. The Dead Sea Scrolls are very affirming. You can check it for yourself."

It's not correct to say that the Scrolls preserve "the complete writings of every Old Testament book except Esther." Most of the manuscripts are very fragmentary. Likewise, it's true that a few of the biblical manuscripts are essentially identical to the Masoretic Text, the traditional Hebrew text, and others have a text that is quite close to it. But there are other Qumran manuscripts, such as the recently fully published Samuel scrolls, which confirm what scholars already had known: that some books in the MT are riddled with copyists' errors, some (by no means all!) of which the Scrolls help to correct.

The second:

Touching our ancient past
Charlotte region eager to be thrilled by seeing real Dead Sea Scrolls
JAMES D. TABOR

Excerpt:

Archaeology is the material evidence of our human past. As an archaeologist, I have long observed and experienced the thrill that ancient discoveries cause in all of us. The look on the faces of my students as we uncover ancient ruins from the time of Jesus, or explore one of the caves where the scrolls were found, is unmistakable.

The effect stems from a combination of the hand, the head and the heart. Ancient things connect us, inform us and stir us emotionally, with a combination of thoughts and feelings that are truly fundamental to us as human beings.

But you don't have to be a field archaeologist to experience this phenomenon. Maybe you have held in your hand a letter or other object from your family several generations back, or stared for long moments at the signatures on our U.S. Constitution. These material things are able to strangely connect us to the past.

Foundation of this civilization

The Dead Sea Scrolls are like that for all of us, whether Jewish, Christian, Muslim or secular, for the Bible is fundamental to us all. The scrolls come to us from a time in history, the 1st century B.C. through the 1st century A.D., that forms the foundation of our Western civilization.

Also, there's an article in the Peoria Journal Star about a local lecture given by Professor Martin Abegg of Trinity Western University:

Scrolls invigorate Abegg's faith
Former Peorian speaks on Dead Sea Scrolls

In it he talks about the text of a manuscript containing Genesis 48:1-11. Incidentally, this is 4QGen^f, which I edited in DJD 12. The MT text of Genesis is overall well preserved, although parts of Genesis have significant variants in the Greek translations (the LXX or Septuagint), some of which are probably original. By my count even this fragment, containing only part of a chapter, has seven, mostly minor, variants (ignoring spelling variants) from the MT.