Vatican allows Scrolls to change to Bible

The Times (U.K.) ^ | 09/11/2001 | RICHARD OWEN

[Pokey78]

THE Vatican is to abandon decades of secrecy and obstruction to allow changes in the Bible based on revelations in the Dead Sea Scrolls, more than half a century after they were discovered.

The extent of the changes is expected to be disclosed this month, but the revised version of the New Jerusalem Bible will take five years to complete.The scrolls have been the subject of controversy between Jewish and Roman Catholic scholars since they were found in caves at Qumran on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea in 1947. The Vatican has been accused of keeping them secret for fear that they would undermine Christianity.

In The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception, two British authors, Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, accused the Vatican of suppressing the scrolls because they contained material at odds with accepted Christian belief.

The Jerusalem Bible, which was first published in French in 1956, appeared in English ten years later. The writer J. R .R. Tolkien was one of the translators. It is the official text for use in Roman Catholic liturgy and revisions are subject to approval by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the Pope’s keeper of doctrine.

Father Gianluigi Boschi, a Dominican theologian at the Pontifical University of St Thomas Aquinas in Rome and a leading expert on the scrolls, said the recent growth in scroll scholarship and the publication of previously inaccessible scrolls meant that some of the changes would be radical. He is to address a conference on the changes this month.

Father Boschi said that the project would link “the whole picture of the origins of Christianity” to the findings at Qumran. He declined to say which passages would be modified, but predicted that the changes would be “surprising and innovative”. It was time to end to “the extraordinary scenarios put about by conspiracy theorists who claim that the Vatican has manoeuvred to hide the truth about the Dead Sea Scrolls.”

Several of the intact scrolls, preserved in terracotta jars at Qumran by an ascetic sect called the Essenes, are now kept at the purpose-built Israeli Shrine of the Book. Many of the other texts and tens of thousands of scroll fragments were bought with the aid of Vatican funds and have been under the control of Dominican scholars at the Ecole Biblique et Archéologique Française in Jerusalem since the 1950s.

The failure to publish more than a fraction of the Ecole Biblique scrolls led the Oxford biblical scholar Geza Vermes to call it “the academic scandal of the 20th century”.

Hershel Shanks, editor of the Biblical Archaeology Review in Washington and author of Understanding the Dead Sea Scrolls, said that “unbiased Catholic experts” were now in the forefront of scroll scholarship. He said it was hard to imagine what the scrolls could contain that could undermine Christianity.

Minor adjustments have already been made to the Jerusalem Bible in the light of the two scrolls versions of the Book of Isaiah.

[DonQ]

I have seen so much nonsense on this thread that it is obvious that a great many people are not nearly so concerned about what the Bible itself says as they are about what a particular translation makes it appear to say.

[geologist]

interesting

[bryan1276]

It's always interesting to see how impractical Bible disbelievers are. When the Bible says Virgin, it means Virgin. As I said before, you could've known that from English. Alma Mater is a combination Hebrew word and Greek word. The Hebrew word there is Alma which means Virgin. The Greek word there is Mater which means Mother. And you know what you realize after all the shouting is over? You should've believed the Bible in the first place. Your citing Latin and the Targum is a lot of garbage to perhaps confuse some folks in the THREAD who may not know better and will be impressed by how you SOUND ;) Go kid the kiddies

[DonQ]

You obviously haven't consulted a dictionary. Alma mater is neither Greek nor Hebrew, it is Latin, only Latin, and it means "foster mother" or "nurturing mother". The Hebrew word for virgin is (phonetically) betoola. That is the word used whenever virginity is specifically referred to. It is painfully obvious that you are out of your depth in this discussion.

[bryan1276]

Did you just say that Mater was not a Greek word? Wow! Well, I'll make quick work of this "deep" conversation. The word "mater" is in fact a Greek word. (If you've done any cursory study in etymology you would know that Latin and Greek are both of the same root and therefore have similar words.) As you are ardent about mater being Latin, which it is, I am also going to tell you that it is a Greek word for Mother. If you need to find a lexicon or read some verses in a Greek manuscript to see the word in front of you, read Matt. 10:37, 15:4, 19:5, 19:19, 19:29.

Now, you told me that the word ALMA is also strictly LATIN; however in the post just a ways up you said this: "In Hebrew, Almah means young - "

Nice shootin Tex :) Foot in mouth disease. Believe the Bible and you won't have that problem next time. When you mess with the Book God messes with your mind. Until you figure out what you're talking about and get a consensus in your own brain about this thing, I'd suggest a little time out of posting things.

[TheDeacon]

The 1611 KJV also contained footnotes. Including alternated readings in Greek and Hebrew. This was discontinued in later editions.