At the Near East Archaeological Society meetings in Providence, RI, this Friday, Dead Sea Scrolls experts Peter Flint and Martin Abegg announced and discussed the discovery of a new scroll fragment from Qumran.  On its own, it doesn't seem very exciting compared to most of the Scrolls--just a fragment of Nehemiah 3:14-15 with names of people involved in rebuilding the wall in Jerusalem and the locations at which they worked.

But Flint explained that while introductory textbooks often state that we have found Dead Sea Scrolls representing part or all of every Old Testament book except Esther, if we divide the Hebrew canon into the thirty-nine books of modern Old Testaments, there are actually two others we had never found--1 Chronicles and Nehemiah.  But 1 and 2 Chronicles were almost certainly one book originally, and we have found parts of what we call 2 Chronicles.  Many scholars think Ezra and Nehemiah were likewise one book originally, and we have parts of Ezra from Qumran.  But others disagree, thinking the two books were separate originally.  So, if it should turn out to have been the case that the two were separate at Qumran also, now we have proof they knew Nehemiah as well as Ezra.

What does all of this have to do with Jesus?  Nothing directly.  But every new discovery, however minor, that confirms that the Bible at the time of Jesus and the apostles was the same, or nearly the same, as the one we know, gives us confidence that when Jesus and the apostles quotes or alludes to the Scriptures, we know what they were utilizing.  No history needs to be revised this time around, as some scholars seem so eager to do.