Courtesy Frank Moore Cross

A Dead Sea Scroll fragment of Exodus 1:1–5, called 4QExb, recording the move to Egypt of Jacob’ household. The three partial lines read, “with Jacob their father,” “Issachar, Zebulun and Joseph” and “seventy-five persons.” Though brief, this late first-century B.C.E. to early first-century C.E. fragment varies twice from the traditional text of the Old Testament known as the Masoretic text and agrees with the older, third or second-century B.C.E. Greek translations, the Septuagint: The fragment adds the word “their father” and has 75 instead of 70. This teaches us that where the Septuagint and other translations diverge from the Masoretic text, these differences should not be dismissed as mistranslations; the translators may have been working from a non-Masoretic manuscript.