Monday, October 06, 2008

CAROL NEWSOM is interviewed in the Daily Citizen, GA:
Stroll through the Scrolls
Misty Watson

After working to translate the Dead Sea Scrolls, Carol Newsom realizes there are some discrepancies in the ancient Jewish texts and Old Testament translations.

But “I’m more impressed with how faithful (texts) have been over 2,000 years,” said Newsom, a Distinguished Professor of Hebrew Bible at Emory University in Atlanta, who spoke at the Dalton First United Methodist Church Sunday evening.

The Dead Sea Scrolls “don’t change anything for (Jewish or Christian) faith,” she said.

[...]

From 1978 to 1982, Newsom, now 58, translated and wrote a dissertation on a manuscript dating back to 100 B.C. called “Songs of Sabbath Sacrifice,” which are songs people living in Qumran would sing on the Sabbath. One song was sung on each of 13 Sabbaths, all pertaining to angelic priests and the heavenly temple of God.

[...]
Pretty much right, but more complicated than this. But I won't get started.
The Book of Jubilees, believed to have been written by Moses in the second century B.C., closely follows the stories in Genesis, but includes more detail, such as “elaborate poems,” she said.
Perhaps believed by the early audience to have been written by Moses, but not by specialists today, who don't even think that Moses wrote the Pentateuch. Obviously that's what Carol meant, and she probably phrased it more clearly than it ended up in the article.