Apologetics Press - The Dead Sea Scrolls and Biblical Integrity
Not a lot of good information there. For instance, the article states:
Qumran, however, has provided remains of an early Masoretic edition predating the Christian era on which the traditional MT is based.
and:
Most of the biblical manuscripts found at Qumran belong to the MT tradition or family.
The Masoretic text is so named because it was compiled by Masoretes, and the textual tradition that underlies it is far removed from those of Qumran. I say "those of Qumran" because all the Pentateuch and many of the other books have different versions attested at Qumran. It is completely and totally false to call any manuscript at Qumran "Masoretic," and the Masoretic text is clearly not based on any of the manuscripts found there. Scholarship does not refer to manuscript "families," and it is tiring of the phrase "manuscript tradition," but the manuscripts of Qumran are their own tradition, as are those of LXX and the Samaritan Pentateuch. The tradition behind MT split off from the Palestinian tradition very early, and the tradition attested at Qumran developed considerably before finding the form it now has.
The Isaiah scrolls found at Qumran closed that gap to within 500 years of the original manuscript. Interestingly, when scholars compared the MT of Isaiah to the Isaiah scroll of Qumran, the correspondence was astounding. The texts from Qumran proved to be word-for-word identical to our standard Hebrew Bible in more than 95 percent of the text. The 5 percent of variation consisted primarily of obvious slips of the pen and spelling alterations (Archer, 1974, p. 25).
This is flat wrong. I am preparing the critical apparatus for the book of Isaiah for the new Biblical Hebraica Quinta, and there are over 5,000 variants between MT and 1QIsa<a>. While almost 4000 of them are orthographic variants that make no real translational difference, over 1000 of them are actual word variants, and many are quite significant. 1QIsa<b> also differs greatly from <a>, and there are 2 other manuscripts that also have variants where the text is extant. The scholarship behind this article is very poor.
Then your article goes on to argue for an early date for Daniel, arguing the late date is preferred by scholars because of a refusal to recognize the legitimacy of prophecy:
The apparent reason for this conclusion among critical scholars is the predictive nature of the book of Daniel.
This is utterly false. The late date is preferred because of the language used (very late orthographically and lexicographically) in Daniel combined with the uncanny resemblance of Nebuchadnezzar's improprieties and those of Antiochus Epiphanes.
Due to the amount of Daniel fragments found in various caves near Qumran, it appears that this prophetic book was one of the most treasured by that community.
This is false. Daniel is attested in 8 fragments. The books of Psalms, the entire Pentateuch, Isaiah, the minor prophets, Jubilees, and even 1 Enoch are far more numerously attested. It was not "one of the most treasured" at Qumran by a long shot.
As in the case of Isaiah, before Qumran there were no extant manuscripts of Daniel that dated earlier than the late tenth century A.D.
This is false. The Septuagint version of Daniel is attested in several manuscripts from the fourth century CE on. This article is far off the mark in so many ways.
