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Do we have the complete Torah from the Dead Sea Scrolls? If not, how can we know for sure that the Torah we have today is the same from the time of the Second Temple Period, for example?

Bob
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According to Prof. Emanuel Tov in part 2 of his series of articles on the history of the Masoretic Text (abbreviated MT):

"No complete proto-MT scrolls have been found; just partial scrolls and fragments. Thus, only a very small percentage of the proto-MT biblical text has survived, possibly five percent. Nevertheless, since the surviving texts are virtually identical with the medieval MT, we believe that the non-extant portions of proto-MT would have been identical with the consonants of the medieval text."

Harel13
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  • I consider it very wrong to claim, that since thousands of existing fragments are indeed very close to MT we can infer that at least one scroll was occasionally identical to it. – Al Berko May 10 '21 at 12:36
  • @AlBerko But we have some of the material by the Masoretes. I'm not aware of any evidence that there were any significant differences between the various scrolls they compared. So why are you certain this was not the case? The Orthodox Jews of the past - Prushim and most of Klal Yisrael - had scrolls with minor differences. The Hellenistic Jews had multiple different Septuagints after the original was lost. But we kept our scrolls. – Harel13 May 10 '21 at 18:09
  • I am familiar with this doctrine, where everybody else makes mistakes, miswrites the text, adds, or edits, but we never fall for errors, our texts are error-free forever. I don't find any support for this claim in the Talmud either, Rabbis frequently misquote and Rashi and others present different versions of what we know. I remind you, there even were no Halachot of writing Sefer Torah until the late first Millennium. So, strong claims require strong evidence. – Al Berko May 11 '21 at 05:37
  • @AlBerko I never said "error-free". Neither did Emanuel Tov. I recommend re-reading. There are multiple textual variations and we were always aware of the existence of these. But they were always minor: a Vav here, a Yod there, etc. There were also some really rare cases, such as the three books found in the mikdash. These however are all incomparable to the differences between the Masoretic/proto-Masoretic and the various septuagints, which are massive and significant. – Harel13 May 11 '21 at 05:51
  • Strangely enough, it's still being debated whether or not Rashi or our sages in the Talmud actually had those verses that we don't have in our Tanach. It's a big subject that has nothing to do with "the doctrine of inerrancy" or whatever. I recommend checking out Rabbi Reuven Margolies' המקרא והמסורה. – Harel13 May 11 '21 at 05:53
  • Take a moment to read what the researchers say : https://www.academia.edu/13800196/Genesis_in_the_Dead_Sea_Scrolls – Al Berko May 11 '21 at 12:57
  • Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masoretic_Text#Second_Temple_period : "Such ancient recensional forms of OT books bear witness to an unsuspected textual diversity that once existed; .... Thus, the differences in the Septuagint are no longer considered the result of a poor or tendentious attempt to translate Hebrew into Greek; rather they testify to a different pre-Christian form of the Hebrew text". On the other hand, some of the fragments conforming most accurately to the Masoretic text were found in Cave 4" – Al Berko May 11 '21 at 13:11
  • Let us continue this discussion in chat. – Harel13 May 11 '21 at 13:14
  • I found something to support your claim, nothing to do with the Dead scrolls, but still impressive: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masoretic_Text#Critical_study – Al Berko May 16 '21 at 07:08
  • "In a recent finding, a scroll fragment was found to be identical to the Masoretic Text. The approximately 1,700-year-old En-Gedi Scroll was found in 1970 but had not had its contents reconstructed until 2016. Researchers were able to recover 35 complete and partial lines of text from the Book of Leviticus and the text they deciphered is completely identical with the consonantal framework of the Masoretic Text." – Al Berko May 16 '21 at 07:08
  • @AlBerko shkoyech. I have on my computer a list of septuagint fragments from the 1st century CE and back, but having been really busy this past week, I haven't gotten very far. It's hard tracking down translations of these, seeing as I don't know Greek. – Harel13 May 16 '21 at 07:24