Jesus would not recognize The Christian Bible today | Joel Baden

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Links Mentioned in this Episode:
- - All through September we have Joel's course on sale: The Rise and Fall of Biblical Israel. This is an eight lecture course on Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings. It’s 50% off, the entire month of September, via this link.
- - submit your questions to Joel about the Hebrew Bible, or anything else in the Misquoting Moses podcast!
*Episode Outline:*
0:00 What did the “Bible” actually look like in Jesus’ time?
2:13 Why there is no single, fixed Bible and different traditions contain different books
4:43 Scrolls, not books: what biblical texts physically looked like in antiquity
7:48 What the Dead Sea Scrolls are and why they changed biblical scholarship
11:08 Did the Dead Sea Scrolls community even have a fixed biblical canon?
16:16 Multiple versions of Samuel existed at the same time, and both were treated as legitimate
18:10 What the Septuagint is and why the Greek Bible sometimes differs dramatically from the Hebrew
22:49 Why ancient scribes could change, expand, rearrange, and preserve different editions of biblical texts
31:43 The Leningrad Codex, the Masoretic Text, and the basis of most modern Hebrew Bibles
36:49 Why the divine name Yahweh is traditionally read aloud as “Adonai”
39:31 How Hebrew vowels were added centuries after the biblical texts were originally written
43:45 Should modern translations correct ancient scribal mistakes or preserve the traditional text?
48:28 Hot Take: Why Joel says there is no “original Bible”
54:36 The Ketef Hinnom silver scrolls and the earliest known biblical words outside the Dead Sea Scrolls
*Episode Description*
What is “The Bible”? The question seems simple, but the answer is complicated. Protestant, Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Jewish Bibles contain different books, arrangements, and sometimes different versions of the same texts. The idea of one fixed, universally agreed-upon Bible developed much later than many assume.
In this episode, Hebrew Bible scholar Dr. Joel Baden takes us back to the time of Jesus, when there were no printed books and no clearly defined biblical canon. Using the Gospel of Luke’s scene of Jesus reading Isaiah, he explains that sacred writings existed on separate scrolls. There was no single bound volume containing the entire Hebrew Bible.
The Dead Sea Scrolls deepen the picture. Discovered near Qumran and dating from the last few centuries BCE, they preserve some of our earliest biblical manuscripts. Rather than revealing one stable text, they show remarkable diversity.
Texts we now call “biblical” were found alongside works such as Jubilees and the Community Rule, with no obvious marker separating scripture from other important writings. Some non-biblical texts were copied just as frequently, suggesting they held considerable authority within the community.
The scrolls also show that biblical books circulated in multiple versions. Copies of Samuel found at Qumran sometimes resemble the traditional Hebrew Masoretic Text, while others align more closely with the ancient Greek Septuagint. This suggests that ancient communities could accept different forms of the same book at the same time.
Rather than beginning as one fixed collection, the Bible emerged gradually from a diverse body of texts whose authority, wording, and boundaries developed over centuries.
This leads to a broader discussion about the two major textual traditions:
1. *The Septuagint (LXX):* The Greek translation from the 3rd century BCE, created for the large Jewish, Greek-speaking community in Alexandria. It was the primary Bible for the authors of the New Testament.
2.  *The Masoretic Text (MT):* The standardized Hebrew text that forms the basis of most modern Old Testament translations. However, our oldest complete manuscript of this text, the Leningrad Codex, dates only to the 11th century CE—more than a thousand years after the Dead Sea Scrolls.
*3 Key Takeaways:*
1. *The Bible Was Not a “Book” in Jesus’ Time:* Sacred texts circulated on separate scrolls, not in one bound volume. There was no single physical book containing what we now call the Hebrew Bible.
2. *Multiple “Correct” Versions Existed Simultaneously:* The Dead Sea Scrolls show that different versions of biblical books circulated at the same time. Ancient communities were more comfortable with textual variation than modern readers often expect.
3. *“Canon” is a Post-Biblical Concept:* A fixed list of authoritative scriptures developed much later. At Qumran, texts we now call biblical and non-biblical could be treated with similar importance, with authority shaped largely by community use and acceptance.