What then is the true value of the scrolls? Well, above all it gives us the actual text of the Hebrew Bible as it existed in the first century BC. And we can compare that to the official Hebrew text that lies behind the English translation of the OT. We find out the text is the same. There are a few variations, of course, that are very interesting. But it shows how well stabilized the text was in that one thousand years or so leading up to Codex Leningrad, the principle codex behind which our modern