Dead Sea Scrolls – Web View Initial Release

Dead Sea Scrolls – Web View Initial Release

To continue a raft of updates coming to The Way to Yahuweh over the course of 2024, I am pleased that some work over the past few months has finally come to fruition!

As many people have informed me, the PDF versions of the Dead Sea Scrolls (and the papyrus transcriptions etc.) are not very easy to work with (especially when trying to copy and paste). I have accordingly been working to convert them into easily readable XML (eXtensible Markup Language) files, which can also be viewed a lot easier on The Way to Yahuweh itself.

At the present time the Dead Sea Scrolls Textual Critical Edition is available by following the relative links here. On each page for the specific Tanakh book you’ll find the full Textual Critical Edition completely readable and able to be copied with very little hassle. At the bottom of each page the XML file for the page can be downloaded, along with the XML file containing the full cache of notes (although not all books contain notes). As usual, PDF versions will always remain available via the downloads page.

Whilst very good for being able to convert into web-viewable format, the XML files can also be utilised by any other software package or developed API which are able to read XML data. This can then be converted into other formats. This will allow all the files (eventually) up on TWTY to be disseminated among other platforms, and utilised in a variety of ways. It also means updates to any file can be done very quickly, and not have to be reduced to redoing a PDF file (which can be quite cumbersome!). This will also be able to be distributed among other platforms that link to or use the XML files once new updates are added.

I’m still working on how things look on each page, so there may be a few times where pages aren’t loading. Rest assured these will only be temporary outages, so always check back if you are unable to load a page.

As always, any errors please let me know. 🙂

More DSS Fragments Discovered

Still the discoveries go on from within the Qumran caves (well, technically Nahal Hever in this case).

Several more fragments from the Nahal Hever Greek Minor Prophets scroll have been discovered during excavations on the site as reported by The Times of Israel.

Once images of these new fragments have been uploaded onto the Leon-Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Database, I shall incorporate them into the transcription of the Greek Minor Prophets scroll which can be downloaded from the Downloads Page.

Here’s hoping there’s more discoveries to follow!

Interesting YouTube Videos

Here are a couple of interesting YouTube videos regarding the Dead Sea Scrolls, their discovery, and on Greek Papyri:

Greek Papyri and the discoveries from Grenfell & Hunt

DSS Discovery

DSS Content

Chester Beatty Papyri and their Digitisation

Overview of the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin (excellent place to visit, btw!)

New Blog! 4QSam^a Identification

As has been mentioned previously, I’ve finally got around to finishing a blog post on a newly identified fragment in the extensive Dead Sea Scrolls manuscript 4QSam^a (also known as 4Q51 Samuel^a).

Along with this, there’s been some corrections / updates to the following:
4Q51_1samuela.pdf;
4Q51_2samuala.pdf;
4Q51samuela_(4QSama)_Full.pdf;
DSS_2Samuel.pdf;
DeadSeaScrolls_Complete_Collection.zip;
DSS_Genesis.pdf;
TC_Edition_Full.pdf.

Give the main blog post a read over here 🙂

New Fragment Identification: 4QSam^a

During the time when I was producing the Dead Sea Scrolls – Image Sources page, it gave me a great opportunity to check the manuscript images again, especially as they had uploaded some better, more up-to-date images than what was previously available to the Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library (LLDSSDL). I will obviously be going back again (and again, and again!), but I was very happy to see, and subsequently identify, a never-before-published fragment of 4QSam^a (4^th Qumran Cave, Samuel Manuscript A), regarding which I will now discuss.

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Update! New DSS Manuscript + Blog Post

To coincide with the release of a previously unreleased Dead Sea Scrolls manuscript (named MurIsa – see the Downloads Page), I have also done a Blog post explaining the transcription process, plus a few other tidbits about the Dead Sea Scrolls.

This is actually my first blog post in over 7 (!) years; I plan on doing quite a few more this year, as there is quite a lot to say about things concerning the Dead Sea Scrolls, Scripture, and anything and everything in between 🙂

Keep an eye out for further Blog posts in the near future 🙂

Wadi Murabba’at Isaiah and The Way to Yahuweh Transcription Process

Whilst I can’t exactly fathom how I missed such a Dead Sea Scrolls Manuscript (I mean, it’s not like I haven’t done transcriptions for the other Wadi Murabba’at scrolls… oh wait, yes I did!), it does however give a good opportunity to discuss the Dead Sea Scrolls and the transcription process for TWTY, using this very manuscript as an example.

Prior to 2011, the only way to see manuscripts of the Dead Sea Scrolls (which include those from Wadi Murabba’at, Wadi Sdeir, Nahal Hever etc.) would either a) be a scholar and have access to them for a scholarly article/Masters/Ph.D.; b) have a copy of one of the numerous volumes from the Discoveries in the Judaean Desert series (DJD), which range from the ‘oh that’s not that expensive (£96)’, to the ‘OH MY WORD I’LL NEED TO REMORTGAGE MY BLASTED HOUSE! (£282.50)’ – you’re looking at £6,000+ for the entire collection (40 Volumes at the moment); or c) find a book about a Dead Sea Scrolls manuscript produced by a scholar, that also includes the image(s) (or facsimile as a reproduction of a manuscript is more commonly known).

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Update! New Dead Sea Scrolls Page

You might be wondering, if you’ve visited this site before, why on earth I’m announcing a ‘new’ Dead Sea Scrolls page, when I’ve already got several.

This one is a little different. It’s not really ‘more’ information on the Dead Sea Scrolls etc., but rather a link to all the images that are transcribed on TWTY!

So not only can you see the transcriptions, but have an easy to reference page for the actual images of the DSS manuscripts themselves!

For most manuscripts, the first few image links are of the full ‘plates’ (these have more than one fragment on them, usually in order as to how they match up with the text they reproduce); the rest are images of individual fragments, mostly in fragment-number order. Also indicated is the official publication that the images were initially printed.

Having gone through the images again, I ended up discovering a Dead Sea Scrolls manuscript that I’d missed (Whoops! There are a few of them…), but also identified an unpublished fragment of 4Q51 Samuel^a (4QSam^a) which I have already incorporated into the transcription of said manuscript.

To make up for the fact that I had no updates in February, look out for some up and coming blog posts on the above two mentioned items. Should make for some good, light reading 🙂

The above two mentioned Dead Sea Scrolls manuscripts have already been put on TWTY – brownie points to those who find the new Dead Sea Scrolls manuscript, and even more to the one who can identify the place in 4QSam^a where the new fragment has given us more of the text!

Update! Complete TC Edition & More

I may be cutting it quite close, but as mentioned back in April, I have managed to complete the DSS TC Edition! All Scriptural Books found among the Dead Sea Scrolls will now have their TC Editions online, both as separate books, and also in one giant TC Edition PDF File. Included in this Full publication are a small Preface, along with an Appendix regarding the text of Isaiah 61:1-2.

See the Downloads Page for the files to download/view 🙂

As with all TC Edition’s that have been completed, I end up updating most of the relevant Dead Sea Scrolls Transcriptions along with them. I did keep a ‘sort-of’ list, so may be worth re-downloading any document you’ve already had.

The list that I kept was as such:

4QpaleoDeut^r; 1QDeut^a; 4QDeut^k2; 4QLev^b; 4QLev^d; 11QLev^b; MasLev^b; 1QIsa^a; 1QIsa^b; 4QIsa^a; 4QIsa^b; 4QIsa^c; 4QIsa^d; 4QIsa^e; 4QIsa^f; 4QIsa^g; 4QIsa^h; 4QIsa^k; 4QIsa^l; 2QJer; Leviticus Parallel; Deuteronomy Parallel; Isaiah Parallel.

There is now very little I can do to assist in everyone’s DSS studies. Bar the occasional manuscript that appears once every decade or so, all of them are on TWTY for people to use for their studies!

I will be releasing them in other formats in the future (Bibleworks, E-Sword, even possible The Word), but these will be sporadic and won’t be coming forth any time soon.

I’ll also be taking a little break for at least up until the end of January. Then I will commence completing all the other projects I’ve already started (namely the Ancient Greek Papyri transcriptions & translations, as well as versions 2 and 3 of the Renewed Covenant Translation).

I have also removed a section from TWTY – and that is the Greek-English Interlinears section. I have come to understand that Interlinears don’t help – they rather hinder study, and make people think that they are translating when using an Interlinear to “assist”. They’re not; they’re mainly producing drivel. As such, I will not be producing any interlinear – ever. Plain parallel versions are fine though, so will be keeping those projects alive.

Anyway, apologies for waffling on. I shall stop 🙂

Hope everyone has an enjoyable new year, and I shall be posting again in 2017!

Update! Loadsa stuff!

Firstly – Happy New Year!

It’s been over a year since I last posted about things new on TWTY.

Unfortunately lots of IRL stuff got in the way of things this past year, and still ongoing (found out I had cataracts on my eyes last year: my right eye has been operated on; my left will be done at the end of April. Needless to say, not being able to see properly makes what I’ve been doing the past decade quite difficult!), but I hope this comes to its conclusion soon. 🙂

Nevertheless, I have been using as much of my spare time as possible to continue doing things, and so here we are!

Essentially, I have done so many corrections to existing things on TWTY, that unless you’ve downloaded everything in the past 4 hours, then everything you currently have is out of date – this applies to the translations, ancient manuscripts, and especially any and all Dead Sea Scrolls! I lost track of which ones got updates, so I can’t provide a list, so if there’s any you’ve been looking at recently, I’d start with re-downloading that and taking a look through. May find a few things I have corrected since. 🙂

That’s the already existing files out of the way – now for what’s going on “new stuff” wise!

There are three new DSS Manuscripts online now – X Joshua, X Judges, and F.Amos 1, all available at the usual place on the Downloads Page.

There’s also been a new section added on the downloads page – a TC Edition, with TC standing for Textual-Critical. These are the combined manuscripts of the Dead Sea Scrolls in order to form a full “Qumran Bible” of sorts, with any differences between the manuscripts noted in footnotes, with the reading of the Masoretic Hebrew, Greek Septuagint, and for the Torah, the Samaritan Pentateuch in the same variant.

Obviously I haven’t repeated the differences between the DSS and these other manuscripts in these TC Editions, as I’ve already done that in the main Dead Sea Scrolls transcriptions. I’ve been updating this new section over the past year, and have only got four books left to do (Leviticus, Deuteronomy, Psalms, and Isaiah). I hope to have these done by the end of the year, but as always, this is liable to change. 🙂

Next up is a new TWTY E-sword module, containing the Version 1 Translation of the RC/NT found here on TWTY. Well I say that, I still have yet to finish adding Luke, John, and Acts to the Module, but all the rest of the books are contained within.

If you don’t know what E-Sword is, pop on over to the E-Sword website and take a look. Along with TWTY module is the Module installer programme, to allow you to easily install TWTY E-sword module into E-Sword without much bother.

As I was going through the translations whilst creating this module, it allowed me to do some updates to the translations, which have all been added to the E-Sword module, the Website, and the PDF’s of the translations.

Download all the Version 1 PDF’s and the E-Sword module here.

Yet another update comes to you via a visitor to TWTY, who is very kindly converting the Dead Sea Scrolls files into BibleWorks database files. With their permission I am putting them up on TWTY for others to download and use with their version of BibleWorks. Currently have the Genesis Manuscripts and the Great Isaiah Scroll (1QIsa^a) complete. I will post updates periodically when new files are added. Get the files (including instructions on how to import them to your BibleWorks) here.

Finally, we have a small addition to TWTY, and that is an XML version of the Dead Sea Scrolls manuscripts. XML has so many amazing uses I wouldn’t be able to list them all, but if you know what XML is, then you’ll enjoy this update. Only the one ready at the moment, but as always, I shall add others when I’ve done them. 🙂 4Q82^g Habakkuk XML.

Phew! That’s it – all things updated/new have been submitted for your pleasure!

As with everything, feel at liberty to use any and all things on TWTY freely and without constraints, and ANY issues you find, don’t hesitate to contact me using either the Contact page, or by posting on the forums 🙂

Edit:
The E-Sword and BibleWorks Modules should be able to be downloaded now. Apologies for the error with that!