What is this?
1990s DNA Testing, Okay.
What’s going on now? ? ?
2012 DSS What are the scrolls made of
Parchment has DNA. Okay.
Israel Antiquities Authority
Okay, there’s an academic team.
Dust has collagen.
Sheepskin but cowhide also
Cows should not be at Qumran.
Cowhide and DSS? No.
The shorter version of Jeremiah was written on cowhide.
The longer version was written on sheepskin.
Different regions.
Steefen:
So, you’re saying the DSS manuscripts are from different regions. Multiple decades.
Interesting ! ! !
Diversity and some scholars suspected this: Genizah.
This means no Qumran community because of the diversity of manuscript origins.
The widely accepted view among historians and archaeologists is that a group of Essenes lived at Qumran. This theory is known as the Qumran-Essene hypothesis.
The community lived at Qumran from roughly 100 BCE to 68 CE.
They lived ascetic (simple and strict) lives, sharing property, practicing daily ritual baths,
and engaging in communal meals.
The Dead Sea Scrolls: Scholars widely believe the Essenes wrote, copied, and preserved the famous Dead Sea Scrolls in the settlement’s scriptorium (a room for preparing scrolls) and hid them in the nearby caves.
Steefen:
The last sentence could be expanded to explain
while the Essenes wrote, copied, and preserved,
1) they preserved manuscripts not written and copied by them at Qumran
or
2) their parchment also came from outside of Qumran.
Let me check something here.
2020
The result about sheepskin versus cowskin parchment is real and comes from a peer-reviewed study. There was also an earlier, much more limited DNA effort in the 1990s.
The major study: 2020
The key citation is:
Sarit Anava et al., “Illuminating genetic mysteries of the Dead Sea Scrolls,” Cell 181, no. 6 (June 11, 2020), pp. 1218–1231.
DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2020.05.031.
The researchers extracted ancient DNA from 26 Dead Sea Scroll parchment fragments and used high-throughput sequencing to determine the animal species from which the parchment was made. The animals included sheep, goats, ibex, and cattle.
Most importantly for your observation:
Most of the scrolls were made from sheep skin, but some were made from cow skin.
The researchers specifically examined four fragments of Jeremiah. Two were from sheep and two from cows. The genetic evidence suggested that the fragments came from two different versions/manuscripts of Jeremiah, rather than all belonging to a single manuscript.
And yes—the Qumran/cattle issue is explicitly discussed
This is the part I think you’re remembering from the video.
The researchers concluded that the cow-hide parchment could not have originated locally at Qumran, because cattle were not raised in the harsh Judean Desert environment.
Uppsala University, whose researchers participated in the work, summarized the finding this way:
“cowhide parchment was also used. Since cattle were difficult to raise in the dry desert climate around Qumran, these manuscripts also presumably came from elsewhere.”
Science News likewise reported that the researchers concluded that the cow-skin scrolls must have been produced elsewhere, because cows could not have been raised in the parched Judean desert.
So your basic recollection is correct.
But there is an important nuance
The finding doesn’t mean that cows literally could not exist at Qumran. That’s a stronger statement than the evidence establishes.
The more defensible historical argument is:
Qumran’s extremely arid environment was unsuitable for maintaining cattle herds on the scale necessary for parchment production. Therefore, cattle-hide parchment found among the Dead Sea Scrolls is evidence that at least some scroll materials originated outside the immediate Qumran region.
And that is actually quite significant because it challenges a simplistic picture in which all of the scrolls were produced by the Qumran community itself from locally available materials.
The 2020 study concluded that the genetic evidence was consistent with the Dead Sea Scrolls representing a broader Jewish textual environment, with at least some manuscripts or parchment materials coming from elsewhere.
There was DNA work even earlier
This is interesting because the 2020 study wasn’t the first attempt.
In the 1990s, researchers were already experimenting with ancient DNA from Judean Desert parchment. A 1996 publication was:
S. R. Woodward et al., “Analysis of parchment fragments from the Judean Desert using DNA techniques,” in Current Research and Technological Developments on the Dead Sea Scrolls (Brill, 1996), pp. 215–238.
The researchers reported extracting and sequencing DNA from small parchment fragments and attempting to identify the animal species. Another report from that period describes DNA being extracted from eleven small pieces and successfully amplified/sequenced.
There was even an Associated Press report from May 8, 1997 describing the Hebrew University project. The researchers hoped DNA could identify the species, population, and even sex of the animals whose skins were used.
So there are really two generations of DNA research:
| Period | Research | What it accomplished |
|---|---|---|
| 1990s | Woodward et al. / Hebrew University | Early PCR-based ancient-DNA experiments on Judean Desert parchment |
| 2015 | Teasdale et al. | Major advances in parchment DNA sequencing methodology |
| 2020 | Anava et al., Cell | Large-scale high-throughput sequencing of Dead Sea Scroll parchment; identified sheep, goat, ibex and cow |
| 2024 | Further methodological work | Improved non-destructive DNA recovery, including confirmation of the DSS species identifications |
The 2020 paper is the definitive citation for the sheep/cow Dead Sea Scroll finding you’re asking about.
Qumran had a teacher of Righteousness, he cared about discrepancies between or among certain scriptures.
Yes. If by the Teacher of Righteousness you mean the figure described in the Qumran sectarian texts, then scriptural disagreement was important to him and to the community associated with him. But there is an important distinction: the texts portray him less as someone interested in textual criticism in the modern sense and more as someone who believed that God had revealed the correct interpretation of Scripture to him.
The clearest evidence: the Damascus Document
The Damascus Document (CD) says that the community had gone astray because its members did not understand the true meaning of the Law, and that God raised up the Teacher of Righteousness to teach them.
A particularly important passage says:
“God visited them and caused a root of planting to spring from Israel … and He raised up for them a Teacher of Righteousness to guide them in the way of His heart.”
The Teacher therefore wasn’t simply preserving existing interpretations. He was understood to have received divinely authorized interpretation.
The Habakkuk Commentary is even more revealing
The Pesher Habakkuk (1QpHab) repeatedly says that God made known to the Teacher of Righteousness the “mysteries of the words of His servants the prophets.”
The community believed that prophetic passages contained meanings that were hidden from earlier generations but had now been revealed.
For example, the commentary interprets Habakkuk’s statement about the righteous living by faith as referring to the Teacher’s followers and interprets Habakkuk’s “wicked” figure as a contemporary opponent of the Teacher.
So the process is essentially:
Scripture → hidden meaning → divine revelation to the Teacher → correct interpretation for the community.
And yes, there were disagreements over particular biblical laws
This is especially interesting because the Qumran community apparently believed that the Jerusalem priesthood was practicing the Torah incorrectly.
The Miqsat Ma’ase ha-Torah (4QMMT)—“Some of the Works of the Law”—lists a series of disputed legal practices. The text presents these matters as things that distinguish the community from the people and priesthood in Jerusalem.
Among the disputed issues were things such as:
- calendar calculations,
- purity,
- sacrifices,
- marriage,
- Temple practices,
- and the interpretation/application of particular Torah laws.
So they weren’t merely saying, “Everyone has his own interpretation.” They believed one side was objectively correct and the other was violating God’s law.
But there’s an even deeper issue relevant to your question
The Qumran manuscripts demonstrate that there were already multiple textual forms of biblical books circulating before the Masoretic Text became standardized.
The Dead Sea Scrolls contain, for example:
- texts resembling the later Masoretic form,
- texts resembling the Septuagint’s Hebrew Vorlage,
- and other textual forms that don’t fit neatly into either category.
That means the Qumran community was operating in a world where Scripture itself was not necessarily represented by one uniform textual tradition.
And this is where your question about the DNA evidence becomes potentially interesting.
The 2020 DNA study showed that some scrolls—most famously some Jeremiah fragments—were written on cow parchment, whereas others were on sheep parchment. The researchers argued that the cow-parchment manuscripts probably came from elsewhere rather than being produced locally at Qumran.
That doesn’t prove that the Qumran Teacher possessed manuscripts from different textual traditions. But it does provide physical evidence for manuscripts entering the Qumran collection from different geographical/production contexts.
And the Qumran texts themselves show that the community was very concerned with which interpretation of Scripture was correct.
So I would put the evidence this way:
Teacher of Righteousness: concerned with correct interpretation of Scripture.
Qumran community: concerned with correct application of Torah.
Dead Sea Scrolls: demonstrate that different textual forms of Scripture existed.
DNA analysis: demonstrates that at least some of the physical manuscripts were produced from animals unlikely to have been locally raised, suggesting that some manuscripts/materials came from outside the immediate Qumran environment.
The fascinating question is therefore not simply “Did the Teacher care about discrepancies?” but:
Did the Teacher of Righteousness recognize that different manuscripts of Scripture contained textual differences, and did he use those differences—or particular textual forms—to support his interpretation of Torah?
There is evidence that gets us surprisingly close to that question, particularly with Jeremiah, Deuteronomy, Exodus, and the calendar laws.
I care about this:
So there are really two generations of DNA research:
| Period | Research | What it accomplished |
|---|---|---|
| 1990s | Woodward et al. / Hebrew University | Early PCR-based ancient-DNA experiments on Judean Desert parchment |
| 2015 | Teasdale et al. | Major advances in parchment DNA sequencing methodology |
| 2020 | Anava et al., Cell | Large-scale high-throughput sequencing of Dead Sea Scroll parchment; identified sheep, goat, ibex and cow |
| 2024 | Further methodological work | Improved non-destructive DNA recovery, including confirmation of the DSS species identifications |
The 2020 paper is the definitive citation for the sheep/cow Dead Sea Scroll finding you’re asking about.
@Robert, do you have something to say about the above timeline?
Parchment is made from untanned animal skin, usually from sheep, goats, or calves.
People used papyrus and parchment in the first century CE.
- Established use: Made from scraped and stretched animal skins (sheep, goat, or calf), parchment had already been invented centuries earlier (prominently developed in Pergamon by the 2nd century BCE).
- First-century application: It was well-known and utilized during the first century CE, famously seen in the animal-skin and leather manuscripts like parts of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
- Cost and durability: Parchment was more durable than papyrus when handled heavily, but it was also more expensive to produce, meaning papyrus remained far more common for daily administrative and literary use.
@Robert, do you have anything to add to this?
What could be useful to me about the second video which I have not discussed yet is how Jesus used the book of Jeremiah.
- The “Den of Robbers”: When Jesus cleared the merchants out of the temple, he quoted Jeremiah 7:11 (recorded in Matthew 21:13, Mark 11:17, and Luke 19:46).
- The Message: He challenged the religious leaders by asking if they had turned God’s house into a “den of robbers,” mirroring Jeremiah’s warning to ancient Israel about misusing the temple.
- The New Covenant: During the Last Supper, Jesus pointed to the promise in ** you do not have permission to see this link **.
- His Blood: He called the communion cup the “new covenant in my blood,” showing that his death fulfilled Jeremiah’s prophecy of a new relationship between God and His people.
@Robert, How else was the book of Jeremiah used by the biblical Jesus?
Well, how did Paul use the Book of Jeremiah?
- Boasting in God: Paul quoted Jeremiah 9:23–24 in 1 Corinthians 1:31 and 2 Corinthians 10:17. He used this to remind believers to boast only in the Lord rather than in human wisdom or strength. [** you do not have permission to see this link **]
- The New Covenant: Paul discussed the “new covenant” in 2 Corinthians 3:6, which builds directly on Jeremiah’s promise of a new covenant in Jeremiah 31:31–34. [** you do not have permission to see this link **]
- Prophetic Calling: In Galatians 1:15–16, Paul described being set apart by God from his mother’s womb. This language mirrors the call of the prophet Jeremiah in Jeremiah 1:5. [** you do not have permission to see this link **]
- Potter and Clay: Paul used the image of a potter shaping clay in Romans 9:21 to explain God’s authority, an analogy rooted in Jeremiah 18:4–6 and Isaiah. [** you do not have permission to see this link **]
@Robert, you have anything to add to this?
What is used in the Septuagint (written in stages, mid 3rd cent BCE and the 1st cent BCE),
the shorter version of Jeremiah or the longer version of Jeremiah?
The Septuagint (LXX) contains the shorter version of Jeremiah.
More precisely, the Greek Jeremiah is about one-eighth shorter than the Hebrew Masoretic version—roughly 2,700 words shorter in Greek depending on how the comparison is calculated. The differences aren’t merely stylistic; there are substantial omissions, rearrangements, and differences in wording and sequence.
For example:
- In the Masoretic Text (MT), Jeremiah’s oracles against the nations occur in chapters 46–51.
- In the Septuagint, the corresponding material occurs earlier, in chapters 25–32.
- The LXX also lacks some passages found in the MT and has a substantially different arrangement.
And this is where the Dead Sea Scrolls become very important
We now have actual Hebrew manuscripts of Jeremiah from Qumran that appear to represent both textual forms.
The particularly important manuscripts are:
- 4QJerᵃ (4Q70) — represents a Hebrew text closely related to the longer Masoretic form.
- 4QJerᵇ (4Q71) — represents a Hebrew text that is much closer to the shorter Hebrew Vorlage underlying the Septuagint.
This is a major discovery because it demonstrates that the shorter form of Jeremiah wasn’t simply something that a later Greek translator arbitrarily created by deleting material.
A Hebrew version of Jeremiah corresponding substantially to the shorter LXX form actually existed.
And this ties directly into the DNA issue we were discussing. The 2020 study found that some Jeremiah scroll fragments were sheepskin while others were cowhide. The researchers concluded that the cowhide manuscripts likely came from outside the Qumran region. They also found that some of the Jeremiah fragments belonged to different textual traditions.
So we have three things converging:
1. The LXX has a substantially shorter Jeremiah.
2. Qumran preserves Hebrew Jeremiah manuscripts representing both the long and short textual forms.
3. The physical/DNA evidence indicates that some of these manuscripts—or at least their parchment—came from different geographical sources.
That is quite significant for your question about the Teacher of Righteousness and scriptural discrepancies. The Qumran community was not living in a world where there was necessarily one universally fixed Hebrew version of Jeremiah.
@Robert, you have anything to add to this?
Jeremiah 7:11 is in Short and Long Jeremiah.
What’s important to me is Jeremiah Chapter 7, v 11, the misuse of the Temple.
Did the rebels during the Jewish Civil War a short time before AD73 misuse the Temple.
My answer would be, yes.
@Robert, you have anything to add to this?
Categorically saying my second video is scholarly simplistic is wrong.
@Robert,
What are the important discrepancies between how Jesus and Paul used short and long Jeremiah? Let’s see what you have to add to this.
Here is an answer:
2. Jesus and Jeremiah 31 — much more interesting
The New Covenant passage is Jeremiah 31:31–34 in the MT, corresponding to Jeremiah 38:31–34 in the LXX, because the chapter numbering differs.
Both editions contain the New Covenant prophecy.
The important difference is therefore not that one Jeremiah has the New Covenant and the other doesn’t.
Rather, the wording and theological context differ somewhat, while the basic prophecy is present in both.
Jeremiah says that God will make a new covenant with Israel and Judah, unlike the covenant made at the Exodus, and that God’s law will be written on their hearts.
This becomes especially important when we look at Jesus’ Last Supper:
“This cup is the new covenant in my blood.”
That is conceptually extremely close to Jeremiah 31.
But here’s an important correction to your original statement:
We cannot say that Jesus explicitly “quoted Jeremiah 31:31–34.”
The Gospel tradition presents Jesus as alluding to/appropriating the New Covenant concept, not giving us a verbatim quotation of Jeremiah.
3. Paul and Jeremiah 9:23–24
This is one of the places where your question gets particularly interesting.
Paul says:
“Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”
in both 1 Corinthians 1:31 and 2 Corinthians 10:17. The passages are explicitly connected to Jeremiah 9:23–24.
But Paul doesn’t reproduce the whole Jeremiah passage.
Jeremiah says:
Don’t boast in wisdom, might or wealth;
let the person who boasts boast in knowing the LORD.
Paul extracts the central proposition:
“Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.”
Does Paul’s wording prove he used the Septuagint?
No.
And this is important.
The Greek Septuagint wording and Paul’s Greek are close enough that Paul could be drawing on the Greek tradition, but this particular quotation is too short and formulaic to establish confidently which textual edition of Jeremiah Paul had before him.
In other words:
Paul’s Jeremiah 9:24 quotation does not give us good evidence that Paul preferred the short Jeremiah.
4. Paul’s “New Covenant” language is different
You mentioned:
2 Corinthians 3:6 — “who has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant”
This is certainly Jeremiah 31 conceptual territory, but again, Paul isn’t quoting Jeremiah 31:31–34 verbatim there.
The really important thing is that the author of Hebrews 8 actually quotes Jeremiah 31:31–34 at length.
And this is where we get a much stronger textual clue.
The author of Hebrews follows the Septuagint form of Jeremiah. The Catholic NAB’s textual note explicitly says:
“In citing Jer the author follows the Septuagint.”
So:
Hebrews gives us very strong evidence of someone using the Greek/shorter textual tradition of Jeremiah.
Paul’s 2 Corinthians 3 is more of an allusion to the New Covenant concept than a direct textual citation.
5. This gives us an important distinction
I’d divide your examples this way:
| New Testament author | Jeremiah passage | Relationship | Evidence for short/long Jeremiah |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jesus | Jer. 7:11 | “Den of robbers” | No distinction — present in both |
| Jesus | Jer. 31:31–34 | New Covenant concept | Both traditions contain it |
| Paul | Jer. 9:23–24 | “Boast in the Lord” | Too short to establish textual edition |
| Paul | Jer. 31:31–34 | “New covenant” concept | Allusion, not direct quotation |
| Hebrews | Jer. 31:31–34 | Extensive quotation | Strongly reflects LXX |
And that last line is very significant.
6. But there is another major point about Jesus
Jesus’ use of Jeremiah 7 is actually more powerful when you read the entire context.
Jeremiah 7 isn’t merely saying:
“Don’t sell things in the Temple.”
Jeremiah’s argument is much more radical:
Don’t trust the Temple itself to protect you while you violate God’s covenant.
Jeremiah tells the people to reform their behavior, stop oppression and violence, stop exploiting the vulnerable—and then says:
“Do not trust in these deceptive words: ‘This is the temple of the LORD…’”
The Temple is not immune from divine judgment.
And immediately afterward Jeremiah warns that God can do to this house what he did to Shiloh.
That makes Jesus’ Temple action much more ominous than simply protesting commercial activity.
He takes Jeremiah’s Temple prophecy and reenacts it.
That’s why the saying is so important historically.
7. And this connects directly with your Qumran question
Now we have something potentially substantial to investigate.
The Qumran community had a profound conflict with the Jerusalem Temple establishment.
Jeremiah 7 is exactly the sort of prophetic text that could be used to challenge the legitimacy of a corrupt Temple establishment.
And Jesus independently performs a prophetic action in the Temple using Jeremiah 7:11.
But there is no evidence that Jesus obtained this interpretation from Qumran.
What we can say historically is:
Jesus, Qumran, and other Second Temple Jewish groups were operating within a world in which Jeremiah was being interpreted as a living critique of the Jerusalem Temple and its leadership.
And the existence of the short and long editions of Jeremiah makes the picture even more interesting: the people of this period were not necessarily reading exactly the same textual form of Jeremiah.
One correction to keep in mind
I would not currently argue:
“Jesus used the short Jeremiah while Paul used the long Jeremiah.”
The evidence doesn’t support that neat division.
A much stronger conclusion is:
Jesus’ use of Jeremiah 7 and his New Covenant language cannot by themselves identify which textual edition of Jeremiah he used. Paul’s short quotations from Jeremiah likewise don’t establish which edition he knew. But Hebrews’ extended quotation of Jeremiah 31 clearly follows the Septuagintal/short-edition tradition.
And that distinction is important if you’re trying to establish whether early Christianity inherited particular textual forms of Jeremiah rather than merely borrowing Jeremiah’s ideas.
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