Updated American Standard Version
Giving Bible readers what God said not what translators think God meant
Although Jewish and Christian tradition almost unanimously recognize Moses as author of the Pentateuch, few issues relating to the OT now are debated as hotly, and in few issues is the gulf between critical and evangelical scholarship so wide.
Scribes were employed as secretaries in Palestine, Egypt, Mesopotamia, and the Greco-Roman Empire. Court scribes would sometimes rise to positions of social prestige and considerable political influence, much as a Secretary of State today.
Scribes were a class of literate professionals ranging from copiers, secretaries, and government officials in the earlier OT period to special scholars and teachers of the Torah in the postexilic and NT periods.
Please Support the Bible Translation Work of the Updated American Standard Version (UASV)$5.00Click here to purchase. Lachish letters Lachish letter III Replica (front side) Below Material Clay ostraca Writing Phoenician script / Paleo-Hebrew script Created c. 590 BC Discovered 1935 Present location British Museum and Israel Museum Identification ME 125701 to ME 125707, ME 125715a, IAA 1938.127 and 1938.128 The Lachish... Continue Reading →
Although scribes continue to perform such roles in the postexilic period (cf. Neh. 13:13, where a scribe named Zadok is appointed as a treasurer over the storehouses where tithes are kept), the term begins to be more specifically associated with the transmission and interpretation of Torah.
Three men are mentioned as successively filling the office of “secretary” or scribe under David and Solomon (2 Sam. 8:17; 20:25; 1 Kings 4:3). We may think of them as the king’s secretaries, writing his letters, drawing up his decrees, managing his finances (2 Kings 12:10).
Reference in early OT times to those employed for their ability to transcribe information. After the exile, scribes are a class of scholars who teach, copy, and interpret the Jewish Law for the people. They appear in the Gospels primarily as opponents of Jesus.
Texts and versions provide the raw materials for the discipline known as textual criticism. The ultimate aim is to provide a text in the form intended by its author. Generally speaking, the greater the age of a document, the greater is its authority.
The Old Testament, the inspired Word of God, how was it copied, maintained as to the textual reliability, and handed down throughout the past three thousand five hundred years?
The Habakkuk Commentary or Pesher Habakkuk, labeled 1QpHab (Cave 1, Qumran, pesher, Habakkuk), was among the original seven Dead Sea Scrolls discovered in 1947 and published in 1951.