I need an honest answer from a knowledgeable christian. Dead Sea Scrolls.?

Sorry nano but you have some wrong information.

I would suggest for you to watch this documentary, it talks about the dead sea scrolls among many other things.

John Marco Alegro was in charge of translating parts of it.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8259425539...

The dead sea scrolls are not a "recent" find, however despite continued work there is still much that has not been discovered.

The Bible is the Christian (Catholic and Protestant) version of the OT. The Jews have their version which intersects on various books with the Christian version. Then there are other Sects which recognize a smaller or larger sample of the various writings.

To make matters more complicated, the Council of Nicaea arbitrarily decided that many writings (mostly Christian ones) should not be considered scripture and many of these have been completely destroyed, while some have resurfaced.

Edit:

I'm not sure of exact dates, but the dead sea scroll find was at least 50 years or so ago, check the net or local library for details. For a number of years, access to the fragments (and I do mean small pieces) was limited. Only rather recently were the fragments scanned and placed on DVD/CD media to allow greater access for scholars. Yes, several books of the OT are represented, most notably Isaiah as well as other writings. Perhaps the most intriguing is the "copper scroll" which is a copper scroll with cryptic directions to various stores of treasure. So far no sense has been made of this.

Much of this information is available on the web and most likely in several books in your local library. I did find a translation of the copper scroll online as well as various discussion on the fragments.

I seriously doubt that you'll find a "knowledgeable Christian" who will post a "knowledgeable answer" to your question about the Scrolls. Google "dead sea scrolls" and get all the info you need from Wikepedia or other UNBIASED sites. The scrolls (over 1,000) were written in Aramaic, Hebrew, and Greek, and have more significance as a validation of the Jewish bible, the Talmud, than the Old Testament (which everyone outside of Christianity knows is a rip-off of the Talmud).

Some apocryphal material was also found. The Apocrypha is not included in the Canon of Scripture- except by Catholics- for excellent reasons that I won't get into. It is always interesting to compare documents that may claim to be or are thought to be Biblical with The OT and NT to determine truth. There is no harm in seeking knowledge. Therefore I will list a couple of good books, in which the Dead Sea scrolls are examined, that contain support for the accuracy and reliability of the Bible. The Bible, excluding the Apochrypha, is perfect and complete as is and is also in perfect union.

All respect to the Jews, they are very literate, and meticulous at their conservation of knowledge and learning.

There may be Psalms of indeteterminate origin that have been found, but the ones commonly in use today are the ones used as hymns in the second temple.

Seeing that the Essenes, the authors of the Dead Seas Scrolls are a sect of Jews that rejected the Temple, and made a community to themselves, finding their Psalms is sort of like finding some Anabaptist hymns, and wondering at their relevance to the Catholic Church.

There may be some merit to them, and even scholarly interest, but it sort of stops there as far as universal validity.

the bible is A) more protean and changing than fundamentalists want to admit B) more stable as a text then most atheists want to admit.

i doubt we are missing large portions simply because there is no such thing as "the bible"

the old testament are the books collected by jews for jews about their faith....and by definition...if they, as a people...gave a certain book biblical value..then it is in. and if it was not seen as valuable..it did not make the cut. the OT refers to books written other than itself but those books are lost. those books were popular at the time but they did not make it into the 3 groupings (law, prophet, wisdom) I bet there are lots of psalms written by jews that are lost. and I bet that there was wisdome literature that was never made that popular..again...from a texutal standpoint...the coucil of jamnia decided afte the death of christ was the "hebrew bible" was.

there may have been books similar to job or 1 or 2 kings that were written but the faith tradition of the jews decided not to include them.

as for the NT, we have many books, both lost books and found books, that did not make the "final cut"

i will study the gospel of thomas this year in my new testament class. i look forward to it.

i found it intersting that they found isaiah to be word for word the same but jeremiah was found, in two different scrolls, to be very different.

as far as textual critics, read misquoting jesus about the bible texts. Bart Ehrman is the author. He used to be a christian. lost his faith. I sympathize. I can't, at times, believe I am studying to be a pastor, given the doubts I have at 3am!

anyway, bart is good, but don't buy his new book on job. he says the bible has different theories on why people suffer..I say the bible has No theories on why people suffer. I hope that helps.

Psalms chapter is in the bible

Yes, from my understanding the only complete book found was that of Isiah. But, the scrols do support alot of the biblical books.

I believe they proved the bible or at least old testament is not changed at all.