What do the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Bible Code tell us about the Bible?

The Dead Sea Scrolls show that the text of the Bible has undergone changes over time. At the same time, they reproduce the still unfulfilled prophecies unchanged, because God preserves these until they are fulfilled.

The Dead Sea Scrolls are very old manuscripts that were only discovered in recent times. Many hope that they confirm today’s Bible text word for word. But anyone who compares them carefully with the present text finds differences in many places. The same passages read differently in the ancient scrolls than in the Bible accepted today.

This confirms what the Holy Qur’an says about the earlier scriptures. They originally came from God, but people altered their wording over time. The fact that Jewish and Christian scholars themselves now support this finding gives it particular weight.

There is, however, one area that remained untouched by such changes. That is the prophecies which have not yet been fulfilled. Changes mostly affect accounts of the past. But God does not allow His unfulfilled promises to be corrupted until they have come true. Remarkably, the Dead Sea Scrolls support exactly this. Where prophecies are concerned, they reproduce them just as the later Bible does.

This gives us an important principle for reading the Bible. It should be read with respect, because it contains much divine truth. But one cannot assume that every word is unchanged. Approaches from another direction, such as attempts to read hidden predictions of later world events from letter patterns in the text, do not replace this careful examination. What matters is the content and the true promises of God, which are fulfilled for everyone to see.