The science of identifying changes to copied and translated texts and then attempting to identify a reason for these changes is part of a discipline within biblical studies called “redaction criticism.” Below I offer a few of many examples of how the text of the Dead Sea Scrolls differs from the text of the Bible we had before their discovery.
There are lots of places where the Dead Sea Scrolls help us decide which biblical manuscript tradition is better when there is a disagreement between manuscripts. An example of this is the differing accounts of the Philistine champion Goliath’s height. First Samuel 17:4 in the Masoretic Text of the Hebrew Bible says, “And there came out from the camp of the Philistines a champion named Goliath, of Gath, whose height was six cubits and a span.”
A cubit is about 18 inches, or 1½ feet, and a span is half of a cubit. So six cubits and a span is about 9¾ feet tall, which means the head of a person this tall would almost touch a regulation NBA basketball rim. That’s a giant—bigger than Shaq, bigger than Andre! So the Hebrew Bible says that Goliath was six cubits and a span, or 9 feet 9 inches tall.
However, the Septuagint’s translation of that same verse (1 Sam. 17:4) says that Goliath’s height was four (Gk. tessarōn, τεσσάρων) cubits and a span, or 6 feet 9 inches tall. Granted, this is still very tall—certainly tall enough to play center in the Philistine Basketball Association—but it isn’t the inhuman 9 feet 9 inches that Goliath is said to be in the Hebrew text. And before you dismiss the Septuagint’s version as a mistake, remember that the Septuagint is the Bible of the New Testament authors, which they quote far more often than the Hebrew Bible. Furthermore, Josephus supports the Septuagint’s reading in Antiquities 6.9.1 (6:171) when he says, “Goliath, of the city of Gath, a man of vast bulk, for he was of four (Gk. tessarōn, τεσσάρων) cubits and a span in tallness.” Josephus supports the Septuagint’s reading, and the Hebrew tradition appears to be the outlier.
So which is it? Is Goliath six cubits and a span (9 feet 9) or four cubits and a span (6 feet 9)?
The Dead Sea Scrolls provide another source against which to compare biblical accounts. In a copy of 1 Samuel discovered in Qumran Cave 4 (4QSama), the verse reads, “His height was four (Heb. ’arba‘, ) cubits and a span.” So the Dead Sea Scrolls help us solve the mystery of just how tall Goliath actually was; he was a big 6-foot-9 man. Given that the average height of players in the NBA is a little over 6 feet 7, Goliath would have been truly considered a giant among men—just not a 10-footer as the Hebrew Bible says.
Another discrepancy between versions is in Deuteronomy 32:8, where the Masoretic Text says that God divided the nations according to the “children of Israel,” the Septuagint says according to the “angels of God,” and 4Q37 of the Dead Sea Scrolls says according to the “children of God.” Or consider that the Dead Sea Scrolls (11QPsa, the Psalms Scroll) and the Septuagint supply an entire extra verse in between vv. 13 and 14 in Psalm 145; this verse is missing in the Masoretic Text of the Hebrew Bible. Once again, this serves as evidence that there were multiple manuscript traditions in the first centuries BCE and CE and that the version in your Bible may be the minority and, dare I say, erroneous version.
Thus, we learn from the Dead Sea Scrolls that those who copied them either had different manuscript traditions of the biblical texts or felt free to substitute and change certain words as they pleased. Either way, it is evidence that the words that make up the “Word of God” were actually somewhat fluid and not as fixed in the first centuries BCE and CE as some would like to believe.
Although the Dead Sea Scrolls are significant because they are the oldest known copies of the books of the Hebrew Bible by over a thousand years, they are also politically important because their discovery and acquisition are intertwined with the very formation of the modern state of Israel.10 They also have caused great controversy in scholarly circles, which has even led one person to criminal activity!
The scrolls give us an abundance of evidence that the text of the Bible was changed frequently as it was copied and that these variant copies often became manuscript traditions of their own. Thus, although Qumran is never mentioned in the Bible, the scrolls discovered in the caves surrounding the site have directly helped build the Bible we read today, often because the Dead Sea Scrolls provide variant traditions or expansions that are as informative to us today as they were to the Jewish sectarians who wrote them two millennia ago.
CHAPTER 10
Bethleḥem and Nazareth
The cities of Bethleḥem and Nazareth are often associated with Jesus. Even most nonreligious people can usually sing “O Little Town of Bethlehem” around Christmastime, yet many are often surprised to learn that neither city was ever a hub of early Christian intellectual activity. In many ways, both cities function today as symbols of Jesus for Christians more than they ever functioned as historically significant locations. Although both cities later came to be revered as pilgrimage sites for those wanting to visit the places that Jesus was said to have been, as far as the Christian tradition and the composition of the Bible are concerned, other cities we’ve explored here were far more significant. Still, we should take a look at the history of these two cities, as both possess a surprising past.
DISCOVERING BEAUTY IN MODERN BETHLEḤEM
In 2006, as the towering border fence between Israel and the West Bank was being constructed, I was headed to Israel to dig at Tel Ḥaṣor (Hazor or Hatzor) and would be spending a few days in Jerusalem prior to the excavation. When a Palestinian friend of mine learned of my plans, he arranged a dinner for me with his mother and family in Bethleḥem. I invited my colleague Kyle Keimer to join me. My friend even arranged for our transportation, which I would soon learn was a bit more complicated than simply taking a cab to their house due to the politically charged climate. On the night of the dinner, we were picked up by a cab and dropped off at a large pile of boulders in between sections of the unfinished border fence. We were instructed to walk over the rocks and that there would be another car waiting for us, as the driver could not drive his car into the West Bank.
Kyle and I looked at each other and slowly got out of the car. We clambered over the boulders to the other side, where, sure enough, another car was waiting for us. Kyle and I got into that car, which then drove to a residential home. The garage door of the home began to open, and we drove into a garage. Then, immediately, the garage door began to close behind us, while we were still in the car.
We sat in silence.
I spoke up: “Um, hi. Salaam. What are we doing?” I asked.
The driver chuckled and said, “No worry. I’m not kidnapping you. We need to change cars,” he said typing something into his cell phone.
“Why?” I asked.
“They are watching us,” he responded without looking up from his phone.
We were then told to get out of the car and to get into the Mercedes parked next to us in the garage. We did as we were told.
When we were all settled, the driver opened the garage door and said, “Okay, now we go.”
We backed out and began driving to my friend’s mother’s house. I later learned that when you don’t go through the Israel–West Bank Barrier Fence checkpoint, the Israelis can still see you from the lookout towers (and the cameras, and the satellites, and the men stationed as lookouts, etc.). So Palestinians often take to switching cars under the cover of a closed garage in an effort to confuse anyone who might be looking at the car picking up the people scrambling over the rubble hole in the border fence. I’m not sure how effective it is, but I know that no one bothered us that night.
We proceeded to drive to my friend’s mother’s house, where they had quite literally killed the fatted calf for us. Well, actually, it was a lamb, but there it was, roasting on the spit. Nearby were an impressive array of pita bread, hummus, roasted tomatoes, cucumbers, and onions, a plate full of kibbeh (which I describe as meat hand grenades), and endless dishes of salads.
The driver led us into t
he house, where my friend’s mother was waiting for us, flanked by two other Palestinian men. The face of the short, elderly woman betrayed a lifetime of both happiness and the difficulties of raising a Palestinian family in Bethleḥem in the twentieth century.
She leaned toward Kyle and me, smiled, and said in her best English possible, “Thank you. Welcome.”
Kyle and I nodded in gratitude, and I replied, “Thank you for your kind hospitality.”
“We’re glad you made it,” one of the men said in perfect English.
He then lifted the phone he was holding in his left hand and handed it to me saying, “He wants to speak to you.”
I took the phone hesitantly. I looked at Kyle, then at the phone, and said, “Hello?” not knowing to whom I was speaking.
“Bob, you made it!” came booming through the phone. I immediately recognized the voice of my friend, who had been on the phone the entire time to make sure we didn’t run into any “problems” during our trip to his mother’s house.
And it was at that dinner with Kyle, my friend’s mother, her sons, and their children—a house full of twenty people in all—that I first experienced the sheer joy that Palestinian families share with one another, despite all of the ongoing militant chaos around them. We talked politics, but mostly made jokes. Kyle and I talked of our travels in Israel and Palestine, and they spoke of their travels to the United States. We made all the stereotypical jokes you tell when meeting someone from another country for the first time.
I then realized something profound: contrary to everything I had heard in the news about Palestinians, this Palestinian family was exactly like my family. We weren’t rich, we worked hard, we took pride in our family, we tried to stay away from hostile people and keep our kids out of gangs, we believed what we believed, we liked to eat, tell jokes, laugh, criticize the government, and enjoy the beauty we found around us.
It was in Bethleḥem that I discovered the beauty of the Palestinian people. And it wasn’t in the Church of the Nativity or Manger Square, but over a wonderful dinner of roasted lamb and vegetables in the home of a woman I’d never met, whose son, seventy-five hundred miles away, had befriended me. It made me appreciate the struggles of honest, proud, hardworking Palestinians and completely forget about the three cars and closed-door garage swap needed to get there.
THE ARCHAEOLOGY THAT NEVER WAS
The site in Bethleḥem that attracts all of the attention is the Church of the Nativity, which is built over the traditional place of Jesus’s birth. As you approach the Church of the Nativity, you walk through the Door of Humility, a passageway entrance into the basilica in which visitors have to bow low to the ground, forcing a humbling prostration before entering the birthplace of Jesus.
And as you walk underneath the ornamental lamps and censers hanging above, you are directed around to the right of the altar, which leads to a staircase descending to a point directly beneath the altar. It is here that pilgrims find the grotto, the well-worn tapestry-covered remains of a cave that possesses at its center a hole in the now marble floor, the edge of which is preserved by a fourteen-point silver star and ringed by an assortment of hanging oil lamps and paintings of religious icons that keep watch over the traditional birthplace of baby Jesus. I have seen my own students sigh, weep, and become both enraptured and emotionally overwhelmed at the experience of visiting the traditional place of Jesus’s birth.
The problem with the grotto for historians, however, is that there is no archaeological evidence telling us that this is, in fact, the place of Jesus’s birth. I should note that there is an important difference between a traditional pilgrimage site and an archaeological site (though some archaeological sites can also be pilgrimage sites). Some sites traditionally associated with certain biblical characters or events produce no archaeological evidence to support any claim of historical association with the person or event.
The Door of Humility, the entrance to the Church of the Nativity in Bethleḥem, West Bank, built to commemorate the traditional birthplace of Jesus of Nazareth.
The fourteen-point silver star in the Holy Cave, the Grotto of the Nativity, marking the traditional spot where Jesus was born. The Latin inscription reads: “HIC DE VIRGINE MARIA IESUS CHRISTUS NATUS EST,” meaning “Here Jesus Christ was born of the Virgin Mary.”
But just because a site does not possess an archaeological record does not mean that the site cannot evoke emotions in the hearts and minds of believers. Traditional sites can inspire just as much faith and hope and sense of identity in religious individuals as archaeological and historical sites do in archaeologists, scientists, and historians. That is to say, pointing out that a religious site has no archaeological support for its association with a biblical figure does not mean that believers cannot have a spiritual experience at the site. Rather, when it comes to religious experiences, even a simple wall can have tremendous religious significance if a certain group believes it does.
Like I said, the Grotto of the Nativity—the cave in which Jesus was said to have been born in Bethleḥem commemorated by the Church of the Nativity—has no archaeological evidence to support the claim that Jesus was born here. In addition, there is no clear biblical reference that points to this particular location as the birthplace of Jesus. So where did the story of this cave come from?
By examining secondary texts, we learn that the legend of the cave was first documented by the Christian apologist Justin Martyr (100–165), who claimed that when there was “no room at the inn,” Joseph and Mary took refuge in a cave, which contained the manger in which Jesus was said to have been born. Justin first wrote about Jesus’s birth in a cave in Dialogue with Trypho as part of his harmonization of Matthew’s and Luke’s birth narratives. In chapter 78, Justin states:
But when the Child was born in Bethlehem, since Joseph could not find a lodging in that village, he took up his quarters in a certain cave near the village; and while they were there Mary brought forth the Christ.1
So where did Justin get the idea that Jesus was born in a cave? The answer lies in a mistranslation.
In chapter 70 of Dialogue with Trypho, Justin quotes at length from Isaiah 33:13–19, specifically v. 16, saying, “he shall dwell in the lofty cave of the strong rock.” The problem is that the Hebrew text of Isaiah 33:16 reads that for the one who is righteous, meṣadot sela‘im mi´sgabo (), or “fortresses of rocks (are) his refuge.” Note that the Hebrew text says nothing about a cave; rather, the word meṣadot (here in the plural) is actually from the same Hebrew root that gives us the name of Masada, the nearly impenetrable desert fortress in the southern desert of Israel. It’s not a cave; it’s a high place. Likewise, the word sela‘ (here in the plural) is the standard Hebrew word for “rock,” and mis´gav (here in the possessive) is the Hebrew word for “refuge.” So if the Hebrew prophecy of Isaiah 33:16 says nothing about a cave, but instead mentions living “on the heights” in “fortresses of rocks,” how did Justin Martyr get a reference to a cave from Isaiah 33:16?
The answer comes once again from the Septuagint, which translates this passage, “he shall dwell in a high cave (σπήλαιον) of a strong rock.”2 Note that the Septuagint translates the Hebrew word meṣadot (), or “fortress,” with the Greek word spēlaion (σπήλαιον), meaning “cave” or “grotto,” resulting in a “cave of strong rock” in place of the Hebrew “fortresses of rocks (are) his refuge.”
Justin Martyr was obviously reading from the Septuagint’s translation of Isaiah 33:16, not the Hebrew version, which was common for this time. But in doing so, Justin claims that the “cave” mentioned in the Septuagint of Isaiah 33:16 refers not to the cave revered by the Mithraic Mysteries (which is the context of his comments in Dialogue with Trypho 70), but to the cave in which Jesus was born, because he was reading Isaiah’s reference to the “king” in the next verse (33:17) as a prophetic reference to Jesus. So although the Gospel writers never allude to this particular prophecy of Isaiah in reference to Jesus, Justin Martyr
clearly saw a connection and, in his critique against the Mithraic Mysteries, inadvertently began the tradition of the birthplace of Jesus being in a cave in Bethleḥem. This is how legends are made, and this is why when you visit the birthplace of Jesus, you visit a (highly adorned) cave over which a church was built, despite the fact that there is absolutely no archaeological evidence to support this claim; the tradition is rooted in a mistranslation.
Of course, a single highly creative exegesis of Justin Martyr does not prove that the grotto beneath the Church of the Nativity in Bethleḥem was the birthplace of Jesus. Others point to the second-century Protoevangelium of James (18–21), or to the third-century Greek Christian theologian Origen of Alexandria (184/5–253/4), who wrote in Against Celsus regarding the grotto:
There is shown at Bethlehem the cave where He was born, and the manger in the cave where He was wrapped in swaddling-clothes. And this sight is greatly talked of in surrounding places, even among the enemies of the faith, it being said that in this cave was born that Jesus who is worshipped and reverenced by the Christians.3
But although Origen repeats the legend of the cave of Jesus’s birth, he does so in the early third century, over two hundred years after Jesus was born. Likewise, his repetition of Justin’s invention of the cave tradition suggests that Origen was simply repeating that tradition that had been passed down to him.
Nonetheless, the tradition grew, and the cave became the place associated with the birth of Jesus. In 327, Helena, the mother of the emperor Constantine the Great (whom we’ll read more about in Chapter 11), began construction on the first basilica in Bethleḥem, the Church of the Nativity, as part of her larger campaign to commemorate sites traditionally associated with Jesus. These shrines formally signified the empire’s (and therefore the church’s) endorsement of these places throughout the Holy Land as the places where the events in the Bible actually took place. The basilica was dedicated in 339 and stood until the middle of the sixth century, when it was burned to the ground during the Samaritan Revolt of 529.4 A larger basilica replaced it during the reign of Emperor Justinian I, which incorporated many elements present in the original basilica, including the location of the grotto.5
The Cities That Built the Bible Page 21