The Dead Sea Scrolls and Protestant canon

Question

Has the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls had any effect on which Old Testament books should be considered canonical by Protestants? I didn't know this until yesterday, but the dead sea scrolls contained every book of the Bible in Hebrew, including fragments of Deuterocanonical books (except Esther, although most of that is in the Protestant Bible anyway)

I may be operating under the hazy assumption that Protestants only discount the Septuagint because it has its basis in Greek instead of having its basis in Hebrew so correct me if I'm wrong.

That Sirach was originally written in Hebrew may be of some significance for the biblical canon. The book was accepted into the canon of the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible by Catholicism and Eastern Orthdoxy but not by Judaism or Protestantism, apparently on the basis that no Hebrew original was thought to exist at the time the Jewish Canon was closed

Wikipedia - Sirach

I just wonder if this is a source of consternation for any Protestant groups or how/if they justify the texts with their own assumptions and scholarship into what the Jews themselves considered scripture at the time of Christ.

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I'd hope that an answer would include a scholarly refutation of the idea that the original books (at least Sirach and Tobit), being composed in Greek, lacked canonical authority for that reason and no other reason.

Answer 1

I think the other answers so far are missing the force of the question. Obviously we wouldn't include something in the canon just because it was found in the dead sea scrolls, or because it was written in Hebrew. But finding older, Hebrew-language copies of a text (Sirach, for example) whose canonicity is already in dispute could be an argument in its favor.

For example - suppose the Dead Sea scrolls provided convincing manuscript evidence that the deuterocanonical portions of Esther and Daniel were present in the original. That would be (to me) a good reason for including those portions in the Protestant Bible.

Back to Sirach: if this statement from your article is true:

apparently on the basis that no Hebrew original was thought to exist at the time the Jewish Canon was closed

Then you are right and Protestants should accept Sirach into the canon. But I doubt that most protestants would agree. There is no reason to think that Jews of the first century (when the Jewish canon was closed) were unaware of the Hebrew version of Sirach, just because we only recently found out about it. Also, Sirach is a much later work than the accepted books of the Old Testament (assuming a traditional early date for Daniel), which makes it an outlier for other reasons than the language it was written in.

edit

The wikipedia article cites The Sisters of Sinai as it's sources for the claim in this question:

13 See for example the account of Schechter's work in Soskice, Janet (2010) Sisters of Sinai: How Two Lady Adventurers Found the Hidden Gospels. London: Vintage, 241

However, there is no reference to Sirach on page 241, or indeed anywhere in the book. I have not read it, but judging by the reviews it is not the sort of book that would have anything authoritative to say about the formation of the protestant or Jewish canon.

edit 2

Aha! The source must be referring to page 222, which contains this paragraph:

Decisive for Schechter, however, was the fact that Ben Sira, while not included in the later canon of the Jewish Bible, was cited extensively by rabbis in the classic period of rabbinic Judaism (circa AD 200-500) and was often quoted in the Talmud and in medieval Jewish writings. The rabbis would not, Schechter was convinced, give reference to a book not initially written in Hebrew.

That was a fun bit of detective work, but it should be clear that the claim in that article is unsubstantiated.

Answer 2

The Dead Sea Scroll find was not so much finding a copy of a book as it was finding a library. The texts found included canonical, deuterocanonical, apocraphal and other unrelated works from the time.

The find had significant implications for dating other texts and verifying the integrity of some manuscripts, but did not hold any implications for the scope of the canon.

Answer 3

No, the Dead Sea Scrolls have no effect on the Protestant view of Old Testament canon.

Let's take a look at what different books are included:

• Old Testament (protocanonical) books
  • Genesis, Psalms, Isaiah etc.
• Deuterocanonical books
  • Letter of Jeremiah, Wisdom of Sirach etc.
• Other writings
  • Book of Noah
  • Book of Giants
  • Testament of Naphtali
  • Community Rule
  • War Scroll
  • Genesis Apocryphon
  • Cairo Geniza Testament of Levi
  • Book of Jubilees
  • Words of Moses
  • Rule of the Congregation
  • and many, many more.

Considering that the Dead Sea Scrolls include a very random selection of books, nothing about canonicity can be reliably deducted from them.