The Torah and the prophet like Moses
Step 1 of 8
Has the Old Testament been changed?
Jewish: the scribes kept every letter
Jewish tradition holds that the Torah has been copied letter by letter, by scribes bound by strict rules. The Dead Sea Scrolls, a thousand years older than the medieval codices, show how carefully it was kept.
The case for it
The Great Isaiah Scroll from Qumran is about a thousand years older than the medieval copies. In most places its content agrees with the Masoretic text.
Where it falls short
The same scholar shows the wider picture. The Scrolls show the scriptures circulating in several text forms around the turn of the era, the Samaritan Torah differs from the Jewish text in about 6,000 places, and the Greek Jeremiah is shorter by about one-seventh. Careful copying kept one of those forms; it could not undo the division that came before. The Qur'an has one text, written by the Prophet's (ﷺ) own scribes.