Dead Sea Scrolls or Babylonian Talmud
Dead Sea Scrolls: Buried 1879 Years Largely Agrees with Aleppo Codex
The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in the caves of Kumeran in 1946 along with the remains of an ancient settlement.The leaders of this settlement were Priests from the family of the Zadokites, descendants of the high priest Zadok, who served during the days of King David and King Solomon. They were called Isiim. They lived there starting from the 2nd century BC, and until the year of 68 AD, when the place was taken by the Romans, and destroyed. While the Dead Sea Scrolls are not the canonized or masoretic text, it provides a wonderful additional tool for academics to compare the Dead Sea Scrolls with the masoretic Hebrew Bible that has reached us through the Aleppo Codex (included reconstructed sections) and the Leningrad Codex (including suggested changes of modern academics and Rabbis).
Dead Sea Scroll of Isaiah Sheds Light on Biblical Canon and Codexes
The Dead Sea Scrolls lack the Masoretic aspects of the cantillation and/or vocalization (vowels). I have visited Kumeran with great Rabbis who teach Israeli Rabbis to teach Hebrew Bible. The Great Isaiah Scroll is one of the original seven Dead Sea Scrolls discovered in Qumran in 1947. It is the largest (734 cm) and best preserved of all the biblical scrolls, and the only one that is almost complete. The 54 columns contain all 66 chapters of the Hebrew version of the biblical Book of Isaiah. Dating from ca. 125 BCE, it is also one of the oldest of the Dead Sea Scrolls, some one thousand years older than the oldest manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible known to us before the scrolls’ discovery.
Dead Sea Scroll of Isaiah Generally in Agreement with Masoretic Text
The version of the text is generally in agreement with the Masoretic or traditional version codified in medieval codices, such as the Aleppo Codex, but it contains many variant readings, alternative spellings, scribal errors, and corrections. Unlike most of the biblical scrolls from Qumran, it exhibits a very full orthography (spelling), revealing how Hebrew was pronounced in the Second Temple Period.
Hebrew Bible Verses in Babylonian Talmud are part of Oral Tradition Recited from Memory
People ask why not reconstruct the Hebrew Bible by relying on the Talmud that was written and edited during the 5th to 8th centuries of the common era. However, the Talmud sites often parts of verses on the presumption that the intelligent reader knows how to complete them. Moreover, the talmud gets many verses wrong. It reflects an oral culture where verses are recited from memory. Many verses as cited in the Talmud are authentic, as recalled at that time, but those verses are not as accurate. Those verses do not reflect what we know is the Masoretic text. Later scribes didn’t want to correct the Talmudic text. Rather scribes are able to make corrections while transmitting that text as they received it by putting corrections in brackets.