There sure is a lot of talk about the Dead Sea Scrolls and what was discovered at Qumran. Sadly few know of what they are speaking of as rumor has again replaced solid facts and easily discernible evidence. The debate today, among those pseudo-scholars who have read at least one book on the subject, rages between which texts of the Bible found at Qumran are "authoritative." Many, too many, reply upon the Greek translation of the Jewish Bible for their Old Testaments today, and that for several reasons. First of all, this Greek translation was the translation used by the Greek-speaking church and later it would be the ultimate source and standard for all English translations since the beginning. Coupled with this was the discovery of portions of the Greek translations of the Jewish Scriptures at Qumran. With the failure of the church to read and understand Hebrew the Jewish Hebrews texts, along with the loss of the Hebrew language among the Hellenized Jews of the Second Temple period, even in the days of Jesus, Aramaic had replaced the use of Hebrew among all but the intellectuals and spiritual leadership. Needless to say the ability to read Hebrew fell into disuse long, long ago, and few early Church Fathers could handle the language. Therefore, for them their Bible had to be Greek.
This Greek Septuagint translation of the Torah was done between 285 and 244 B.C.E., as my quote from the Judaica below attests to. Further more, the other books of the Tanach were translated during the following 2 centuries, i.e. between 244 and 44 B.C.E.
"Septuagint, the oldest Greek translation of the Bible...the legend contained in the apocryphal letter of Aristeas, according to which 72 elders of Israel, six from each tribe, translated the LAW [Torah] into Greek in Alexandria, during the reign of Ptolemy II Philadelphus (285-244 B.C.E.)...The designation Septuagint was EXTENDED to the rest of the Bible and non-canonical books that were translated to Greek during the following two centuries" (Encylopaedia Judaica, Volume 14, p1178).
As stated above Biblical manuscripts were recovered in the Qumran excavations; some were Greek, some Aramaic, and some Hebrew. What escapes almost all today, even some scholars it seems, is that the Essenic community possessed conflicting "Bibles." In other words, the Greek read often exactly opposite to what the Hebrew would read.
Answer for yourself: How can this be and yet be the Word of God?
Without serious investigation on your part you most likely never knew this fact in the first place. Besides that, most today, if they know anything at all, have failed to be told about these alarming inconsistencies in the Biblical texts recovered there. There seems to be a general acceptance that the Greek manuscripts found there only solidify the authority already accepted for the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Jewish Scriptures).
Let me say that the facts state otherwise along with some scholars who will attest to such. Let us examine just what was found there and see if the manuscripts discovered there confirm the authority of the Greek Bible over the Hebrew Old Testament.
The Biblical manuscripts found in the Qumran, are distributed as follows: 60% Proto-Masoretic texts, 20% Qumran style manuscripts, 10% Nonaligned texts, 5% Proto-Samaritan texts, and 5% Septuagintal type texts.
Answer for yourself: Did you notice only 5 % of all the manuscripts found there were Greek? That means the vast majority of the texts were in Hebrew or Aramaic. So much for the fact that the Essenes accepted the authority of the Greek Old Testament and its variant readings over the Palestinian Massoretic text.
Further more, the Qumran style manuscripts have their bases in the proto-Masoretic texts. The Masoretic type texts were dominant in the time of the Hasmonean period (about 160 B.C.E.). (p172 of Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls by Shiffman)
Furthermore, most of the text that vary from the Masoretic (4 LXX manuscript fragments, for example, dating to the 1st and second century B.C.E.), come from cave 4. This is the cave where the texts were not preserved carefully in jars. It is conjectured, that cave 4 was a geniza for the depositing of texts that were damaged or had textual errors.
Some say, 'Cave 4 is close to to Qumran, and had shelves, so it must have been where they kept the books they were currently using.' I disagree. The geniza of Cairo shows that flawed texts, text no longer usuable or never usable, that contained the Name of God were stored nearby. Many synagogues today have genizas in the synagogue itself. It would have been more likely for the people of Qumran to have stored the books they used daily or weekly directly in their settlement, in a building where it could be easily used. These cave 4 scrolls, were, in my opinion, part of a genizia of texts that were in error or unacceptable in other ways, yet could not be merely thrown out, as they contained the Name of God or were part of faulty Scriptural texts.
Additionally, another quote from the Encyclopaeadia Judaica supports this. "In talmudic and midrashic literature, however, it is [geniza] used as a nomen actionis (Shab. 16:1; Lev. R. 21:12; Meg. 26b), as a place for the putting away of all kinds of sacred articles, such as sacred books no longer usable, as well as the books of Sadducees and heretics, and other writings of which the sages disapproved but which were not required to be burned" ("Genizah", Encyclopaeadia Judaica)
Cave 7 contained a collection of only Greek texts, including 2 LXX fragments on paprus. (Shiffman, p 212).
Clearly, by the time of the Hasmoneans (who were before Jesus in history) at least, the Masoretic texts were the majority texts. Jesus himself followed the same division of the Tanach into Torah, Prophets, and Psalms (ie writings), as it says in Luke 24:44. Jesus never made mention of the "four divisions" of the Greek Bible which was existing in his day.
The texts are sacred to us, so the task of copying them is considered of utmost importance. A number of safe guards are taken to preserve the accuracy by the scribe himself. The congregation who gets the scroll is another check in the accuracy of the scroll. They always have someone checking the Hebrew as the scroll is read, comparing it to a scroll that is known to be Kosher (i.e., without errors). Based on the Biblical scrolls found in Qumran, the Jewish scribes have done a remarkably accurate job of passing the text down for the last 2200 years.
In the approximately 2000 years since the writing of the Dead Sea Scroll Isaiahs, it is interesting to note that the only difference between those and the Masoretic text are minor spelling errors in the DSS Isaiah versions. Scholars interpret this and understand that such "accuracy" for such older manuscripts (the DSS Isaiah almost 1000 years older than any known existing Hebrew manuscript before the find at Qumran) lends credibility and assurance that the older existing Massoretic texts which were previously only known from the 9th century A.D., were just as equally meticulously preserved as well from their earlier sources. So this meticulousness in care and copying of the Hebrew manuscripts has been attested to and proven by archeological finds. Such precision and care can be expected to be applied to all the translations by the Jewish scribes. And when Qumran reveals Massoretic and pre-Massoretic texts existing contemporary to the Septuagint, then there is no longer any need for doubt reading its accuracy. The problem comes when one realizes that and can no longer blame the divergent readings of the Massoretic texts as Jewish reactionism to Christianity in the Middle Ages. This simply will not hold water any longer. One must now deal with these divergent readings found at Qumran and as attested in the Jewish Tanakh as they oppose many readings in the Greek Septuagint and the later Christian translations.
It is also important to note that in communities as far apart as Syria or Yemin and England, isolated from each other, the Torah is the same. This is amazing given the distance between them before the age of mass communication and given the isolation of the 2 communities from each other. They were not comparing notes, but copying the Torah from previous ones in their possession. This attests to the accurate transmission of the Torah and Tanach following the scribal methods.
In contrast, early in Church history, a Church Father set out to make a standard version of the LXX, due to the fact that there were so many versions out there.
Origen became alarmed at the state of the Greek text of the Bible: the latter not only differed considerably from the Hebrew text of the Jews, which he believed to be the original one, but it appeared in a wide range of forms in the manuscripts current among the Christians. His purpose in producing his enormous work known as the Hexapla ("the sixfold," completed in 245 C.E.) was to reconstitute and standardize the "genuine" text of the Septuagint, essential both to sound exegesis and effective apologetics.
The Hexapla did not become preeminent throughout the Christian world, since, at the end of the fourth century, Jerome referred to the existence of two other recensions, one Egyptian by Hesychius, and the other made in Asia Minor by Lucian. The existence of these three versions might in itself afford a sufficient explanation of the many discrepancies displayed by the Septuagint manuscripts (Encyclopaedia Judaica, "Bible: Translations").
Considering the painstaking accuracy with which the Tanach is copied, I would rather rely on the oldest Hebrew manuscripts we have today and their translation rather than the Greek mistranslation, no matter how good it might be or others attest to it. You see, the language of the translation limits its accuracy. Greek is very different from Hebrew, and the translation was designed to meet the needs of a Greek-speaking audience. The language you use colors the meaning, and the LXX is thus colored by the Greek language let alone purposefully mistranslated in many, many places. Something that might be of interest to you. Origen, one of the Church father's, believed that the Hebrew text of the Jews was the original text. (Encylopaedia Judaica, "Bible", p853). Many modern translations, such as the NRSV, make use of the Hebrew Masoretic text.