I wonder how they managed to tell a complex story like that before the invention of writing?
but hasnt every story from the bible been found in earlier scripts like from qumran already? not a single word in the bible is not some enhanced copy of an older story already found elsewhere. religion is so sad.
The dead sea scrolls are old manuscripts, including several Bible books, but they date after most of those books were written.
The dead sea scrolls date from 3rd century BCE to 1st century CE. At that time, most of the OT had been finalized. The value of the scrolls is that they are hard copies of these books that are a lot older than previous copies we had.
The earlier parts of this lecture by Irving Finkel talk about what happened when they first translated the more original flood story from stone tablets in 1872. And the rest of the lecture is a nice story about an adventure, so I can only recommend watching the whole thing.
