# Skeptics Used to Say This About Isaiah > [!question] Lingering Questions > - What is the earliest *documented* instance of the "Isaiah 53 was added in the Masoretic Text" claim, and who actually originated it? > - Do "skeptics used to say X, then artifact Y proved them wrong" claims terminate in a different, weaker, documented claim more than half the time when traced? (McClellan's hypothesis, untested here.) > - Does naming a trusted intermediary (e.g. "N.T. Wright said it") measurably speed a false claim's spread versus an unattributed version? > [!tip] Article Ideas > - Citation-tracing as a transferable critical-thinking skill: the same forensic move that debunks "skeptics used to say" apologetics also catches manufactured facts in software supply-chain claims and AI-generated citations. > [!link] Cross Reference > - [[3. Resources/Permanent Notes/A Trusted Intermediary Makes a False Claim Durable]] — this video is a second, independent instance of the same mechanism (already captured from the Passion Translation source); added as evidence there rather than duplicating the claim here. > - [[3. Resources/MOCs/Faith & Theology MOC]] — biblical-scholarship epistemics, general apologetics critique > [!quote] Vocabulary > - **1QIsaiah^a** (the Great Isaiah Scroll) — a Qumran Cave 1 manuscript of Isaiah, paleographically dated ~125 BCE (not the ~200 BCE the apologist in the source video claims). > - **Deutero-Isaiah** — chapters 40–55 of Isaiah, containing the suffering-servant songs (including ch. 53), scholarly-dated to the exilic/post-exilic period and read as referring to Israel, not composed as messianic prophecy. ## Metadata - Source: [[3. Resources/Readwise/Articles/Skeptics Used to Say This About Isaiah]] - Author: Dan McClellan - URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtnH1pHPk3I ## Author's thesis An apologist claimed skeptics used to deny Isaiah 53 existed before the medieval Masoretic Text, until the Dead Sea Scrolls (1QIsaiah^a) proved them wrong. McClellan reports he cannot find any documented pre-1947 skeptic who made that existence-denial claim — only claims about local editing, a different and narrower assertion. The apologetic "smoking gun" story is fabricated, and it persists because trusted intermediaries (up to and including N.T. Wright) repeat it without tracing it to a primary source. ## Key arguments 1. **The claim under review has no documented origin**: no example survives of any pre-1QIsaiah^a skeptic asserting Isaiah 53 was absent until the Masoretic Text — the assertion is invented, not merely exaggerated. 2. **Multiple independent ancient witnesses already attest Isaiah 53** long before the medieval MT — the Septuagint, Vulgate, and early Christian quotations — so the "proved them wrong" framing misdescribes an evidentiary landscape that was never in dispute. 3. **The propagation mechanism is trust, not verification**: apologists cite each other and named authorities; traced to ground, the documented claim dissolves into something different and weaker ("the 1947 discovery changed our understanding of textual transmission"). ## Claim atoms ### A fabricated "skeptics used to say X" claim has no traceable origin > [!quote] ID:rw_pending > "I cannot find a single example of any skeptic of the Bible prior to the discovery of 1QIsaiah A actually claiming that Isaiah 53 was added to the Bible in the Masoretic Text." Where/why: ~01:00 in the video — the falsification core of McClellan's rebuttal; absence of any documented instance is the whole argument. ### Trusted names launder unverified claims into circulation > [!quote] ID:rw_pending > "They heard someone else say them or they read it on the internet and they just repeated it… 'Oh, N.T. Wright said it.' 'Okay, well that's good enough for me.'" Where/why: ~03:30 — names the actual propagation mechanism: authority substituting for verification. Already captured generally in the vault's existing Permanent note on trusted intermediaries. ### Citation chains dissolve into a different, weaker, true claim > [!quote] ID:rw_pending > "By the time you get to somebody who has actually documented something, it's a completely different claim… it has nothing to do with the claim that we started out researching." Where/why: ~04:30 — the forensic tell that distinguishes a manufactured fact from a genuine (if imprecise) claim: trace it and it changes shape entirely, rather than merely losing detail. ## Permanent candidates - The trusted-intermediary mechanism (atom 2) is **already captured** by [[3. Resources/Permanent Notes/A Trusted Intermediary Makes a False Claim Durable]] — this source is added there as a second instance, not duplicated as a new note. - **Citation-chain dissolution as a forensic test** (atom 3) is a distinct, promotable claim: it names a specific diagnostic (trace the chain; if it ends in a different claim than the one you started with, you've found a manufactured fact) rather than just describing why false claims spread. Promoted below. ## Processing checklist - [ ] Identify whether the apologist's claim has any earlier documented source than the apologetics-sphere itself - [x] Cross-link this video into [[3. Resources/Permanent Notes/A Trusted Intermediary Makes a False Claim Durable]] as a second instance - [x] Connect into the relevant MOC — [[3. Resources/MOCs/Faith & Theology MOC]] ## Links - [[3. Resources/MOCs/Faith & Theology MOC]] — biblical-scholarship source-criticism and apologetics-critique - [[3. Resources/Permanent Notes/A Trusted Intermediary Makes a False Claim Durable]] — second documented instance of the same mechanism; linked as evidence there