Is some of your comments you have a good point, in my opinion, but in others you have relatively unsubstantiated rhetoric.  So, let me break it down.

First of all, you say that the DSS do not show the inerrancy or the historical accuracy of the Bible.  As for the inerrancy, Christians only claim that the original autographs are perfect and fully inspired.  Christians have always acknowledged that some errors have taken place in the copying of the original fully inspired original texts and that, obviously, we do not have the originals.  You claim that the Dead Sea Scrolls prove that the original texts were not inspired. The problem with this claim is that they literally cannot do such a thing, as they are not the originals!  Errors in copies do not undermine the inspiration of the originals.

Second, the Dead Sea Scrolls have, generally, supported the contention that the Masoretic Hebrew text of the 9th century AD was a very accurate text.  The number of differences between the DSS and the Masoretic is rather small.  In fact, sometimes the DSS are closer to the Masoretic, and sometimes they are closer to the Greek Septuagint translation of the second and third century BC.  The evidence supports the conclusion that the copying of the Hebrew text was generally extremely faithful.  The Genesis Apocryphon is a fictionalized text from the members of the Qumran community and it is not intended to be an inspired text.  It is more in the nature of a commentary on the well-recognized (to the Essenes) inspired and canonical Book of Genesis.  The differences do literally nothing to undermine the inspiration of the original.  This is a red herring argument.

Second, you say that the DSS disproves the historical accuracy of the Old Testament.  To be honest, I am not sure what you even mean by this.  What historical event in the Old Testament is disproved by the Dead Sea Scrolls?  Perhaps you misspoke here, and you mean that it disproves the accuracy of the current Hebrew text (as opposed to its historicity), as I know of literally zero historical events in the Old Testament which are in any way whatsoever undermined by the Dead Sea Scrolls.  Perhaps you can explain what historical events you are talking about.  In any case, if you actually meant that the DSS undermine the accuracy of the Hebrew text, I believe that quite the opposite is the case, and that they show the incredibly faithful copying of the Hebrew text over the course of over one thousand years from the second century BC until the Masoretic text. The differences are actually quite small, as most scholars have noted.

But… You give a couple of specific examples of significant differences between the DSS and the Masoretic (MT).  You say that 1-2 Samuel and Jeremiah are “extremely different.”  I believe that this is a rather dramatic overstatement, but there is some reason to note a significant difference between the DSS, Septuagint and Masoretic Text of Jeremiah.  I have previously responded to this legitimate point before, and am copying and pasting my response here:

You ask specifically about the question of the two versions of Jeremiah–that in the Masoretic Text (MT) and in the Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS).  Specifically you asked (editor’s note: this comes from a separate question from the same person) about the book, “Evangelicals and Scripture: Tradition, Authority and Hermeneutics,” in the article, “Jeremiah, The Septuagint, The Dead Sea Scrolls and Inerrancy” by J Daniel Hays.

I read this article carefully. It is an excellent article because it gives the facts about the different manuscripts of Jeremiah, offers several possible explanations, narrows the possibilities down to two or three which are most likely and leaves the reader to make their own decision. Bottom line, there is solid evidence for two significantly different textual lines for the book of Jeremiah. Unlike the textual variations in the New Tesatement, all of which are either extremely minor, or are relatively unimportant because scholars are fairly sure which was the original, the two texts of Jeremiah in the MT and the DSS are really sigificantly different. The MT has several sections which are not in the, presumably older, text which led to the Septuagint and the DSS Text. The difference amounts to 2700 words which are not in the DSS and Septuagint, which is about 12% of the entire book. Passages not in the DSS include Jer 33:14-26, 39:4-13, 51:44-49, 51:44-49 and 53:27-30. These are not insignificant differences. This raises questions about which is the correct, inspired version of Jeremiah. The author suggests solutions which include the possibility that Jeremiah himself produced an earlier and a later version of what came down to us as the book of Jeremiah–one completed after he went down to Egypt. Another possibility is that a later editor–the one who created what became the Masoretic Text, inserted other material from Jeremiah significantly after he had died.  If this is the case, the question arises about whether this additional material is inspired.

Here is my quick analysis of this question as it relates your larger question. What it comes down to is this. Does the material we find in the Masoretic Text or in the DSS version of Jeremiah reflect a faithful rendering of original, inspired material? We know for several reasons that God used Jewish editors to compile the final versions of a number of Old Testament books. Daniel is a good example. Might God use the editor as part of his means of producing an inspired text? I say yes. I am not sure that I can “prove” that the additional material in the Masoretic Text which is not found in what was probably an earlier edition of Jeremiah, reflected in the Septuagint or the DSS is inspired. When I look at Jeremiah 33:14-26 I find a wonderful prophecy of the Messiah–that he will be the Branch of Jesse, and that God will make a new covenant with Israel. This certainly has the marks of inspiration. I am going to take a leap of faith here–not a blind one, but one based on experience with the Bible–and conclude that the additional material in the Masoretic Text is in fact inspired writing. God gave custody of the Old Testament text to the Jews, so I will make this my most reasonable conclusion and leave it at that.

My conclusion on Jeremiah is that this does not undermine our faith in the inspired nature of the original of Jeremiah, but it does draw some relatively minor question about the Masoretic Text of Jeremiah.

About the Pentateuch, I am in agreement with you that Moses did not write all of the Pentateuch.  I have always believed that he had little if any input into the Book of Genesis.  I believe that Genesis was put together by editors from material which preceded the ministry of Moses and that Moses had no important role in writing the book.  As for the other four books in the Pentateuch, your point that these four books were put into their final form by editors who came after Moses is certainly true.  I am convinced that things said and written by Moses are in these books.  I have no doubt about this, but the evidence tells us that editors put the books of Exodus, Numbers and Deuteronomy (and possibly Leviticus) in their final forms hundreds of years later. This is proved by the evidence, some of which you mention.  You have a good point here.  I agree with you!  However, this does literally nothing to undermine the evidence for the inspiration of the first five books of the Bible.  It simply tells us something about the process by which the final, inspired texts came into their current form.

John Oakes